My House Was Swatted By Holden Police At 2 AM Last Night After YouTuber Zachary Marten Posted Video Saying I Was Suicidal, Urged Wellness Checks

 

Last night at 2 AM I was awoken to loud knocks on my front door and flashlights shining inside my house, on a school night with my children here. I had no idea who it was and it was terrifying. When I finally realized it was the Holden Police I answered the door and the officer told me that someone had called in a wellness check, claiming that I had been threatening to shoot myself. I am writing this blog because I can’t concentrate on work at the moment and won’t be able to put out much content today. I struggled with deciding whether or not to talk about it, but I think it’s important that people see what happens when journalists speak uncomfortable truths.

This was the second time this happened in the last 12 hours. At 5 PM I received a call from an unknown woman who has been harassing me using burner phone numbers for over a year. Usually I just let her talk after telling her that she’s being recorded so that I can document and catalogue the harassment. Here are previous calls she made, mentioning sexual comments about children. In one of the messages I tell her to stop calling me and refer to her as a name of someone else, hoping she would respond by saying who she really was.

She called me Sunday night, and again Wednesday afternoon, claiming that she was worried I was suicidal. I told her I wasn’t and that I was recording our phone call. I attempted to keep her talking in the hopes that I could extract more information from her. She told me that she lives at 3875 Colvin Hill Road, Danby, Vermont. She said her name was Victoria Goding who works for a company called “Acensus.” She said that she uses the YouTube account “Accountability for Vermont,” and Elon Mask on Twitter. 

20 minutes later she called back and said that she was sorry for what she said.

But she has done this before. Minutes later I found out what she was sorry about when Holden Police knocked on my door while my children were home. They told me that they had received a call saying that I was threatening to kill myself. I told Officer Fay I wanted to record our interaction but she would not let me. I had every right to record her and she was wearing a body cam, but I didn’t want to be confrontational with the police department that is supposed to protect my family.

She also insinuated that it was partly my fault by telling me that this is what happens in my line of work. The more I think about that the more upsetting it is. I refuse to accept the fact that  we live in a country where journalists have to choose between their safety and doing their job. Officers offered to make up a story to tell my 5 and 7 year old children about why the police were at our house, but I told them I would handle that.

Shortly after that I received a phone call from a burner phone or a spoofed account. On the other end was a YouTuber named Zachary Marten, whose channel Tonicandsails can be found here.

Zachary, who goes by Tonic, has left harassing, sexually charged and disturbing voicemails with me in the past. Multiple women have apparently accused him of sexual assault, and he lives with his 80 year old father in Boynton Beach, FL.

I told him when I answered it that he was being recorded and that the contact was unwanted, so as to fulfill the requirement for a 258E Harassment Protection Order. He told me that I would be getting another knock on my door.

Then at 2 AM I was awoken by the knocks on the door that went on for several minutes. The flashlights shining all over my living room floor, not knowing who it was or what they wanted, kept me up all night. I still haven’t slept, and don’t know if I will be able to sleep soundly any time soon. Officers this time were much more understanding and have agreed not to respond to these phone calls again unless the callers verify who they are.

This tactic of harassment is called swatting – the act or practice of making a prank call to emergency services in an attempt to bring a large number of armed police officers to a particular address. It can be deadly in some cases when the callers say that guns are involved, which they did.

After police left multiple people sent me this link from the Tonicandsails YouTube channel, which he has since removed. In it Zachary Marten says my address out loud multiple times, shows pictures of my house on Zillow, and urges his subscribers to call the Holden Police Department and say I’m suicidal.

 

Since then I have been in touch with police in Holden and Florida who have been given all this information, and an investigation is ongoing. So far no arrests have been made. Both callers used a spoof app to call Holden Police Department so they are unable to find out who it was. Apparently an unemployed YouTuber in Florida can download an app and the police are helpless to prove who did it. This should be unacceptable, and if any law enforcement officers out there read this and have more information on how this can be solved, please reach out to me at [email protected].

I have never written about this person before, nor did I seek them out. They are doing this because a radical left wing woman who I have previously written about intentionally spread misinformation about me that I am a pedophile. Marten is friends with that woman and referenced her during several previous calls and messages he left with me. The woman who messaged earlier in the day also referenced this same woman as their source, and said they were calling on her behalf.

I appreciate all of your support and apologize for not being in the right state of mind to publish any blogs today. This is what happens in a free country when people try to be free.