Cops rush to ‘shooting' at Gordon Ramsay's LA mansion after TV chef falls victim to twisted ‘swatting' prank
GORDON Ramsay's home was surrounded by police after a prank caller told cops they heard gunfire in the top chef's mansion.
Ramsay is the latest California-based star to be targeted by a "swatting" scam.
The 58-year-old chef's residence was swarmed by armed cops earlier this week.
They were called at 8:40 PM on Tuesday to the chef's mansion in Bel Air.
An unknown individual told police that a gunman had opened fire at the residence.
But cops in Los Angeles quickly established that the reports were a hoax.
Neighbours confirmed that nothing had happened.
Sources have told TMZ that Ramsay was not home at the time.
Police have put it down to another "swatting" incident - a hoax call to the emergency services aimed at triggering a major response.
Ramsay has not yet commented on the events.
A probe into the incident has been launched and detectives are currently investigating.
However, no arrests have been made so far.
It makes Ramsay the latest celebrity to be targeted in a swatting prank.
What is "swatting"
Swatting is an internet prank where someone makes a hoax phone call reporting a serious crime to emergency services.
Pranks might involve calling police to a fake major incident such as a shooting or a robbery.
This can even involve a SWAT team being deployed to the property - which is where the prank get its name.
Several celebrities have been on the receiving end of such pranks over the past few years.
Earlier this month, Nicki Minaj's home was swarmed by officers responding to another fake report of a shooting.
Top Gun star Tom Cruise was also a swatting victim back in 2013.
Beverly Hills cops came to his mansion after being told there was an "armed robbery in progress."
No sign of trouble was found when police arrived.
Chris Brown, Rihanna, and Justin Bieber are among the other LA based celebs to have been on the receiving end.
But it's not just celebrities who have been victims of swatting.
Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley's South Carolina home was raided last year following a fake call.
Bomb threats and swatting callouts were also made against several of Donald Trump's cabinet picks last year.
It came following the American president's victory over Kamala Harris in November.
Sometimes these pranks can have tragic consequences.
One particularly horrific case came in 2017 when a man was shot dead by police after a hoax police report was phoned in.
Father Andrew Finch was fatally hit by the Wichita Police Department after cops were alerted of a suspected hostage situation at his house.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South Wales Guardian
24 minutes ago
- South Wales Guardian
Brian Wilson: Beach Boys star who surfed the waves to success
Born in California in 1942, he showed early musical talent, teaching harmonies to his younger brothers Dennis and Carl and obsessively studying piano. In 1961, Wilson, his brothers, cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine recorded Surfin', a local hit that marked the birth of The Beach Boys. Signed to Capitol Records a year later, the band shaped 1960s American pop with hits such as Surfin' USA, I Get Around and California Girls. The 1966 album Pet Sounds, which included the track God Only Knows, remains a landmark in modern music, influencing generations of artists including Sir Paul McCartney, who called it his favourite record. Sir Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Smokey Robinson and Carole King were also fans, while The Who's drummer, Keith Moon, fantasised about joining the Beach Boys. The band ranks among the most popular groups of the rock era, with more than 30 singles in the Top 40 and worldwide sales of more than 100 million and they were voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Originally unfinished in the 1960s, he finally completed and released Smile in 2004 to critical acclaim. Wilson struggled with mental illness and drug addiction, but in later years he toured globally.
The Sun
28 minutes ago
- The Sun
How Beach Boys ‘genius' Brian Wilson brought sun-kissed California to world with some of the greatest songs ever made
GOD Only Knows how Brian Wilson created pop's most sublime tunes. The death of The Beach Boys icon at 82 marks the passing of one of the few artists who genuinely deserved to be called a 'genius'. 8 8 8 He was the composer, performer and producer Sir Paul McCartney looked up to. Despite penning all those era-defining songs with John Lennon in The Beatles, Macca placed God Only Knows above them all — and admitted that 'it reduces me to tears every time I hear it'. He performed the song with Brian in 2002 and, as you won't be surprised to hear, 'broke down' during the sound check. Among Brian's other best known songs, mainly co-writes, were Good Vibrations, Surfin' USA, I Get Around and Wouldn't It be Nice. Last night, his children said in a statement: 'We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away. 'We are at a loss for words right now. We realise that we are sharing our grief with the world. Love & Mercy.' His daughter Daria added: 'I don't know what to say. I loved him in ways I can't explain. He was my dad.' Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards Ronnie Wood said he was 'in mourning'. John Lennon's son Sean Ono Lennon described the loss of 'our American Mozart'. And Nancy Sinatra said: 'His cherished music will live forever as he travels through the Universe and beyond. Brian Wilson's last ever performance of iconic Beach Boys hit just two years before his death aged 82 "God bless you, sweet Brian. 'One of the biggest thrills of my life was singing 'California Girls' with Brian.' Brian was born in Inglewood, southern California, in 1942, the first son of Audree and Murry Wilson. From a very early age, he was recognised for his musical gifts. He had perfect pitch and could sing back phrases sung to him as a baby. Brian had a difficult relationship with his dad. He, along with his siblings, suffered psychological and physical abuse by their father. The singer's 2016 memoir, I am Brian Wilson, paints Murry as 'violent' and 'cruel', but also suggests that some claims against him were exaggerated or unfounded. Murry had remembered how, after hearing only a few verses of The Caissons Go Rolling Along, Brian, then an infant, was able to reproduce the tune. At 12, the Wilson family acquired an upright piano, which Brian spent hours and hours teaching himself to play. 8 8 He and his younger brothers, Carl and Dennis, got into the pop sounds of the day — R&B, rock 'n' roll and doo-wop. Despite being partly deaf in one ear, Brian joined Carl and their cousin Mike Love to form a high school group, Carl and the Passions, later bringing in Dennis and Al Jardine to form the Pendletones. Brian co-wrote the group's first song, Surfin', which, in turn, inspired their record label to change their name to The Beach Boys. The rest, as they say, is history, As the chief inspirational force, he brought the sun-kissed Californian lifestyle — surfing, fast cars and parties — to a world emerging from post-war austerity into the Swinging Sixties. The band had adopted a clean-cut, college-boy image, sang about dreamy California Girls and be- came the West Coast's answer to The Beatles. Brian married his first wife, Marilyn, in 1964 and marital strains were to influence the lyrical direction of his masterpiece, The Beach Boys' eleventh album, Pet Sounds. Later that year, Brian had suffered a panic attack on a flight just hours after appearing on TV show Shindig! This prompted him to give up live appearances to concentrate on writing and production. His giant artistic strides began. It's also worth noting that this was the era of psychedelic drugs, notably LSD, and Brian was one of countless musicians to try them out, curious about their effect on songwriting. So came a huge change of tack in his career, leading to his rare mastery of instrumentation, harmony and recording technology. In his later years, Wilson was a man of few words who let his music do the talking. 'A SPIRITUAL RECORD' He struggled with mental illness and found interviews uncomfortable. But, during the times I met him, I found him polite and gracious and steadfastly sincere. In 2016, during a promotional visit to London, I asked Wilson to describe his happiest memory of making Pet Sounds — to some, the greatest album of all time. 'Well, I loved making God Only Knows with my brother Carl. He had a good voice,' he replied, fifty years after its release. It was his understated but heartfelt way of paying tribute to his youngest sibling, blessed with an angelic voice, who had died from cancer in 1998. He told me he had been striving to 'make a choir, a nice choir' with Pet Sounds. Through Carl and the rest of the group's glorious lead and harmony singing, he succeeded. Brian was responsible for the sweeping symphonic arrangements and wall-of-sound production that doffed a hat to Phil Spector's girl group work — but he took it to whole new places. He gave the album weird and wonderful sound effects — bicycle bells, trains, Hawaiian strings, Coke cans and barking dogs among them. 'And we had little toy instruments,' recalled Brian. 'We just thought we'd put them in there for the kids. I knew it would be a very special album,' he continued, before exclaiming, 'I just knew it!'. 8 8 In his memoir, I Am Brian Wilson, he elaborated further: 'I love the whole Pet Sounds record. 'I got a full vision out of it in the studio. "After that, I said to myself that I had completed the greatest album I will ever produce. 'It was a spiritual record. When I was making it, I looked around at the musicians and the singers and I could see their halos.' He also talked about the impact of The Beatles: 'I met Paul McCartney later in the Sixties, in a studio. I was almost always in a studio back then. 'We had a little chat about music. "Everyone knows now that God Only Knows was Paul's favourite song — not only his favourite Beach Boys song, but one of his favourite songs, period. "It's the kind of thing people write in liner notes and say on talk shows. "When people read it, they kind of look at that sentence and keep going. "But think about how much it mattered to me when I first heard it. 'I was the person who wrote God Only Knows and here was another person — the person who wrote Yesterday and And I Love Her and so many other songs — saying it was his favourite. 'It really blew my mind. He wasn't the only Beatle who felt that way. 'John Lennon called me after Pet Sounds — phoned me up, I think the British say — to tell me how much he loved the record.' I'm in a better frame of mind these days. It feels great . . . it's like I see some light. Things make sense to me again Brian Wilson It's sad to think that Wilson, this architect of the band's unique sunlit sound, went on to suffer years in the darkness in the Seventies and Eighties. Mental illness allied to drug abuse left Brian lost in a world of his own from which few believed he would return. But his rehabilitation began in 1988 with his self-titled first solo album. It continued with I Just Wasn't Made For These Times (1995), Orange Crate Art (1995 with long-time collaborator Van Dyke Parks), Imagination (1998) and Gettin' In Over My Head (2004). That same year, he finally realised his lost masterpiece SMiLE. 'That was amazing,' Brian told me. "I never ever imagined it coming out until my manager and (second) wife (Melinda) said: 'You ought to try to finish it.'' He also released a Pet Sounds Live album, but I asked whether he would consider playing the album again in its entirety in concert. 'I don't think we'll be doing that again,' he said with quite alarming frankness. 'We just thought we drove it into the ground.' Last year, it was revealed Brian was suffering from dementia. A conservatorship was awarded to his family, his publicist and manager after Melinda, his wife of 29 years, had died. 8 At the time of her passing, Brian said, 'Melinda was more than my wife. She was my saviour. "She gave me the emotional security. I needed to have a career. "She encouraged me to make the music that was closest to my heart. "She was my anchor.' I remember speaking to Brian on his 66th birthday in 2008, when, in the company of Melinda, life was looking up for this American music icon. Sporting a full head of brushed back grey hair, he spoke movingly about his situation. 'I walk every day for exercise so I can keep alive', he said. 'My state of being has been elevated because I've been exercising and writing songs. 'I'm in a better frame of mind these days. It feels great . . . it's like I see some light. Things make sense to me again.' Not just God, but the whole world, knows how special you were.
BreakingNews.ie
36 minutes ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Brian Wilson: Beach Boys star who surfed the waves to success
Brian Wilson, who has died aged 82, was considered one of the world's most influential recording artists. Born in California in 1942, he showed early musical talent, teaching harmonies to his younger brothers Dennis and Carl and obsessively studying piano. Advertisement In 1961, Wilson, his brothers, cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine recorded Surfin', a local hit that marked the birth of The Beach Boys. Signed to Capitol Records a year later, the band shaped 1960s American pop with hits such as Surfin' USA, I Get Around and California Girls. Brian Wilson was a member of The Beach Boys (Ian West/PA) The 1966 album Pet Sounds, which included the track God Only Knows, remains a landmark in modern music, influencing generations of artists including Sir Paul McCartney, who called it his favourite record. Sir Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Smokey Robinson and Carole King were also fans, while The Who's drummer, Keith Moon, fantasised about joining the Beach Boys. Advertisement The band ranks among the most popular groups of the rock era, with more than 30 singles in the Top 40 and worldwide sales of more than 100 million and they were voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Originally unfinished in the 1960s, he finally completed and released Smile in 2004 to critical acclaim. Wilson struggled with mental illness and drug addiction, but in later years he toured globally.
