Good evening John and welcome back!
Thank you for reaching out to us.
We are sorry to hear about that very unfortunate mishap. Yikes!
I would love to help you with this topic.
The default behaviour is that even if the product is free, the order should go to “Processing” and not “Complete” which sends the tickets.
Is it possible that there is an auto-complete order plugin in place ?
Or perhaps the box at the bottom of Events -> Settings -> Tickets ?
Let me know what you find out.
Have a great day!
Geoff B.