YouTubers Meg Turney and Gavin Free Survive Home Invasion by Armed Fanatic
We are happy to hear that Meg and Gavin were physically unharmed after this terrifying experience with a crazed fan.
The Albuquerque Journal has reported that Gavin Free and Meg Turney were victims of a home invasion in Austin, TX by a crazed fanatic. Turney and Free awoke to the sounds of breaking glass and a gunshot. They quickly hid in a closet and called 911 while Chistopher Giles searched their home brandishing a .45 caliber handgun according to a search warrant affidavit, around 3:40 a.m. on January 26.
Christopher Giles drove eleven hours from Albuquerque, according to documents filed in the 2nd Judicial District Court. A superfan of Meg Turney with a dislike of her boyfriend, former Creative Director of Rooster Teeth, Gavin Free. “A search of Giles’ cellular phone identified various notations identifying Megan Turney and Gavin Free by name,” a detective wrote in the documents. “Furthermore, threatening thoughts were recorded by Giles and directed toward Gavin Free, i.e., ‘I want Gavin Free to die alone, with no children.’ ”
When he couldn’t find the couple, Giles left their house encountering Austin Police Department officers. The police officers found Giles backing his Lincoln sedan with New Mexico plates out of the driveway and ordered him to stop. Instead, they heard a single gunshot coming from the car. An officer returned fire.
Christopher Giles was pronounced dead on the scene. Meg Turney and Gavine Free were physically unharmed.
Hey everyone. I just wanted to say thanks for all the support and concern regarding the recent incident. It’s been a rough time for Meg and myself the last few weeks but we are doing ok. I want to give a huge thanks to @Austin_Police for the amazing response time. you all.
— Gavin Free (@GavinFree) February 13, 2018
Thank y’all so, so much for each and every kind message today and a special thank you to the @Austin_Police for their quick response that night and their ongoing support during this difficult time. Heart you guys so much.
— Meg Turney (@megturney) February 13, 2018
Both Austin and Albuquerque Police Departments report a frightening amount of evidence that Giles planned to do harm to Free and Turney.
One detective said it was apparent that Giles had “developed a fondness of Turney yet resented Free for his lifestyle and success.” Albuquerque Police Department detectives who executed a search warrant on Christopher Giles home in Albuquerque said he lived alone and was “an avid player of video games and was known for watching YouTube videos that were centered on his hobby.”
Detectives took a laptop, two tablets, two cellphones and an Xbox console from his home.
Shacknews sends our love to both Meg and Gavin. This must have been a terrifying experience, and we are just happy that they were not physically harmed. This news is a firm reminder of how serious problems in the gaming and YouTube communities like bomb threats at eSports events, swatting, harassment, and stalking can lead to fatal consequences. It's too late for Christopher Giles, but we can only hope that his story will prevent another sad and scary event like this from occuring.
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Shacknews
replyAsif Khan posted a new article, YouTubers Meg Turney and Gavin Free Survive Home Invasion by Armed Fanatic
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Yeah. Pretty insane story.
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Holy shit.
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Not for everyone. It would be a happier ending if this guy had gotten whatever treatment he needed before this ever happened.
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I know playing armchair psychologist is counterproductive, but I seriously wonder what sort of mental disorder would lead someone to do that. Like, would it be the same sort of illness that drove somebody like John Hinckley or, as a less violent example, "Mrs Letterman"?
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People used to be a lot more proactive with this kind of stuff but the treatment back then was to warehouse people into mental hospitals. That violated a lot of people's rights and due process as many were sent either without problems or they were stuck there getting treated when their episode was really short.
Hence why it's commonly said we don't have as much mental health resources and beds as we do these days. But if you go back to when there was more it was a pretty shitty set up.
The pendulum swung to make it more voluntary and have family urge people to go and it required people with authority to commit someone.
Its kind of why I think mandatory mental health screenings for everyone should take place even 6 months and use it to elevate help if needed. Make mental health as common as a dentist visit and make the care Universal. If you're not up to date with your check (even just an interview) then you can't get a new job, apply for certain things, etc. It's not exactly how I want it but something to the degree that makes reduces stigma of mental health care and give them more tools to identify and treat at risk individuals with a risk based approach. Also to get people in general to learn how to identify and interact with people with mental health issues. Not leave it to calling the police to deal with it.-
Its kind of why I think mandatory mental health screenings for everyone should take place even 6 months and use it to elevate help if needed. Make mental health as common as a dentist visit and make the care Universal.
If only. At this point there's not enough money in mental health to get the professional we already need. But I would love it were this the case.-
The irony of his post being that most poor people in the U.S. don't have dental coverage either.
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Far too young.
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Good thing he was a fucking idiot.
-He entered the house by shooting his way in (or breaking glass then shooting).
-How hard would it be to find someone in their house?
-He then decided to shoot once at the cops and ended up dead.
This is terrifying to me because if he was even a hair smarter they'd be dead.
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That's the interpretation I got from the way the article described it.
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or it was suicide by police
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What the fuck? People are crazy. Glad to hear they are both okay.
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That's nuts.
A similar thing happened to Sunsfan and Sajedene a few years back. They're involved in the pro DOTA2 scene and their apartment was raided by some crack heads who thought they were knocking over a drug house.
Sajedene was streaming live on Twitch at the time. One of her viewers got on the phone with someone they personally know over in Europe who then called the Arizona police.
One of the would-be thieves held Sajedene hostage while the other one took Sunsfan to an ATM to clear out his account. When they got back the police had arrived. If the police didn't show up they could have been killed. -
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Shit like this is why I would never want to be famous, especially internet famous. There are too many socially maladjusted obsessive psychos who latch on to these internet personalities, and the fact that they can probably find subreddits full of people just as crazy as they are doesn't help things one bit.
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The next guy will check the closet.
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I've never heard of these people
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in all fairness it did for well over a decade
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10 or 15 years ago you would have probably seen a dozen disgusting replies like that, all of which would have been even more vulgar and tasteless. It's easy to forget how much things have changed for the better here over the years. Looking back at some of the threads that happened here in the 2000s is really just depressing.
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"Disgusting" was way too strong of a word, and I apologize for that. I should have said "inappropriate". I'm a big fan of gallows humor, but that particular comment just struck me as being in particularly poor taste.
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you're living in a dream world man, rape jokes were super common on this site for a long time
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i guess im avoiding threads where teabagging occurs?
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Woah. Are you fucking serious?
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The Lamp refers to a catchphrase I believe klerck would yell "rape her with a lamp!!!" In the chatty
The lime refers to Mike Tyson yelling about eating assholes during a boxong weigh in.
The sand refers to another catchphrase, I also want to say klerck invented, of "fill it with sand" in reference, mostly, about vaginas. -
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That isn't how I remember the sand reference. I thought it had to do with a Shacker who thought boobs would feel like bags of sand.
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Oh gosh. Movies and real life are blending?
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Yep and that was years after the Jeff k strip.
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Stop using salty that way.
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Fill it with sand is from a JeffK comic, where guys in the desert get a PC or something and say to fill it with sand like the others. But it's said in JeffK internet derp type.
Here, found some links:
https://www.shackwiki.com/wiki/Lamp_Sand_Lime
http://www.somethingawful.com/hosted/jeffk/computarfunnys/comic-44.htm
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For some reason it's extra eerie to me that the post in question was on the eve of 9/11
http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=1954636#item_1954636-
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But not before it showed up on national news. Hah that was a masterful troll. I remember signing that petition a few times.
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At PAX one year, one of the two guys (Mike or Jerry, can't remember which one) said that early in the life of the PA comic strip, the hard drive that had all the comics on it crashed and they didn't have any backups. This is back before they kept all the comics on the site (may be when they were still being hosted elsewhere and didn't have their own site yet).
The guy was devastated (whichever one Gabe is). He went to his job at Circuit City and told one of his coworkers about it and that coworker said that he had a copy of all the comics. Apparently he had been saving each of them to a floppy disk (I guess one per disk?). Gabe was elated but he asked why, the guy just said he liked them and wanted to keep them (and I guess this is back when hard drive space was a precious commodity).
So that one dude's floppy disk collection saved Penny Arcade.
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He introduced me to goatse, meatspin, lemon party, all the terrible icons of the early 2000s. Also remember when linking to those stingers became bankable. I think they were called stingers..they were little Flash animations that played for 5 seconds then a screeching shriek would play and flash to a dead corpse or something
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Our Confederate statue.
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That just looks like embossed single-ply to me, and therefore not soft at all. I am disappoint :-(
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It was the phrasing that made the post pretty gross.
I had never heard of either of them and, after a Google search, yes she is definitely a very attractive woman. I can see how a socially isolated, utterly mentally unstable loner nerd could become dangerously infatuated with someone like that, because an attractive woman who likes video games and cosplay is probably the ideal for someone like the stalker.
If he had said something like that, I don't think he would have gotten the same response. -
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I'm trying to be diplomatic, not saying I agree with it. "This kind of behavior," meaning crass jokes about a woman's looks, happens all the time here actually and is usually celebrated by the community when violence is not involved. This post was exponentially more disturbing than that usual level of boy's club behavior.
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Next time try duke nuked instead
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It goes out to all moderators though, doesn't it?
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Lol too true
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Unfortunately that Enigma is also inside JJ Abrams' Mystery Box. And that box was packed by M Night Shyamalan.
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I've been told it is and they discuss things in their slack channel, but the invisible hand chooses not to act most the time now. I gave up reporting to it since the current rules seem to be whatever they decide not to do on slack.
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That's offensive; it's "Y'all'd". I'm getting really tired of this website discriminating against Southerners and our folksy, down-home ways.
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Best as I can gather, they believe that the community is holding itself to higher standards by piling.
Plus, he could be invisibanned. Haven't seen any of those redfive ban notifications in a while. -
They are getting in the car and headed to his house.
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Oh that’s big! You’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn’t mean he’d consider invading her home himself because she’s hot so after all who wouldn’t? We could all do so well at trying to see the best on people. This pile is fucking ridiculous. So many people acting like he’s victim blaming instead of saying she’s hot in a gross but obviously jokey way.
Gross jokes being bannable would make me a little sad but not as much as everyone piling on as though he actually identified and sympathized with the perp. Holy shit.-
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At least The Grolar Bear would make them breakfast after a home invasion.
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I do burlesque shows on Twitch getting into aircraft. I have 8 subscribers but at least 7 of them could be stalkers.
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I just want to point out that I am taking a stand against this kind of talk. I want everyone to notice my courage in standing up for the strong woman Meg Turney and hairy immigrant Gavin Free. I do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Am I taking a risk? Hell yeah I am, but it's the right thing to do. I hope others will stand with me so that maybe, just maybe, tomorrow can be a better and more inclusive day.
Signed,
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Why is every Shackpile filled with dozens of fully emboldened white knights? I guess if you don't hop on board the offenders ass you might be misconstrued as a condoner or something? All the public pearl clutching that goes on around here gets older than these once in a blue moon tasteless comments. klerck would be proud of this subthread. RIP lil buddy.
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I try to consistently stick up for what I believe. Just because I disagree with you on some things doesn't make a shitty pile okay.
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The home security footage captured him shooting out the window at 10,000 frames per second. Officers reported that the window smashing in slo mo looked "freakin cool"
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he looks like Gabe from The Office and he just hit puberty
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don't know them, but a quick search shows that she absolutely hates wearing clothes. is she a streamer or a game geek?
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Reading stuff like this, I wish I owned a gun. That is friggin scary stuff.
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A! A! L! L! ...B! B! U! U! .....querque! querquuuueeeee!!!
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He'd have had his ass shot if he invaded my house. That's scary stuff right there.
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How does this not happen to celebrities more?
You've got millions of fans and you revel in it but you're also gambling that they are all sane and wouldn't lash out against conventional norms.-
"Fans" overstepping boundaries happens, just doesn't usually end up being a news topic.
https://youtu.be/xkug28eDmN0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iyfEsj1YTU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Grimmie#Death
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At a certain level of celebrity you have the money to insulate yourself from the outside world (gated communities, bodyguards, entourages, etc.)
But I think the real answer is that the number of people who would go from fandom to needing to kill people is very small, which is why it's so newsworthy when it does happen. It's like how you're more likely to get in a car crash versus a plane crash which is why car crashes make the local news and plane crashes make the national news. But it would be real easy to get a plane phobia as a result of the news coverage.-
There are plenty of sex objects, male and female, who have no security details or insulation from stalkers or even sustaining fame.
It could be one in a million small and it would still be happening multiple times a year.
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On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan and three others were shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. in Washington, D.C., as they were leaving a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton Hotel. Hinckley's motivation for the attack was to impress actress Jodie Foster, who had played the role of a child prostitute in the 1976 film Taxi Driver. After seeing the film, Hinckley had developed an obsession with Foster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Ronald_Reagan
It certainly does happen and is another good reason to have less available guns contrary to the opinions expressed in this thread. Being surrounded by Secret Service agents with guns didn't stop people from dying that day.-
I'm fully aware they happen, I'm saying why not more. Especially in the Instagram / Streaming age where the targets like in the middle of the country, largely unsecured and outside of the public eye.
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Security doesn't seem to help that much, this bloke broke into Buckingham Palace twice in the 1980s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Fagan_incident
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Don’t worry. No one had posted in this thread yet ;)
http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=37232331-
I would have totally responded if I had enough money and time to make it down for Quakecon this year and if it weren't for the fact that Texas is hot as balls! The Gaylord was so huge that you could spend pretty much your entire day inside feeling fine, until the moment you stepped outside the hotel and immediately walked into a sauna.
The one time I was able to make it down for the convention, and got to hang out with a bunch of shackers, it was a blast.-
It is right down the street from El Fenix.
:)-
Okay, even though I am a bit of a taco snob and normally don't like Tex-Mex, from looking at their menu that looks bomb as shit!
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Not really a shit storm. There is a pile and a subthread noting holdovers from Shack's sexist immature past.
Rather typical really. If this was a shitstorm it would have hit 300 by now easily. This is just standard Shack dirty laundry finding its way to the front page comments.
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Yeah. I am glad they came out physically unharmed, but I can’t imagine the PTSD they are going to have to deal with :(
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I don't know if I could ever feel safe in my own home again if I had to go through something like that. I hope that they are both able to find really good counseling help after this, because a situation like that sounds like the stuff of nightmares.
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