A Kentucky father brought his shotgun out and dispatched an $1800 drone lingering over his property (repeatedly). Oh yeah. Forgot to mention that dad’s teenage daughter was sunbathing at the time. We can’t help but wonder if she was tanning topless in the privacy of her back yard.
Hmmm. Coincidence?
The owners of said whirlybird claim they were taking pictures of a friend’s house. Mmm hmmm. They actually had the audacity to get in the dad’s face and threaten him until he let them know further aggression from them would be met with ballistic therapy.
Dad was charged with criminal mischief and wanton endangerment for firing his boomstick at the intruding robotic peeping Tom. He was not charged for warning the pissed off perverts to back off or he’d perforate them.
Dad says he’s going to fight the charges.
The Washington Times picked up the story:
A Kentucky man shot down an $1800 drone hovering over his sunbathing daughter and was then arrested and charged with first degree criminal mischief and first degree wanton endangerment.
“My daughter comes in and says, ‘Dad, there’s a drone out here flying,” William H. Merideth, 47, told a local Fox News affiliate reported Tuesday. The Bullitt County father shot at the drone, which crashed in a field near his yard Sunday night.
The owner of the drone claims he was only trying to take pictures of a friend’s house, the station reported.
“I went and got my shotgun and I said, ‘I’m not going to do anything unless it’s directly over my property,’” Mr. Merideth said, noting that the drone briefly disappeared when his daughter waved it off. “Within a minute or so, here it came. It was hovering over top of my property, and I shot it out of the sky. I didn’t shoot across the road, I didn’t shoot across my neighbor’s fences, I shot directly into the air.”
If I lived in a rural area and someone was flying a camera over my daughter in a bikini, I’d be sorely tempted to swat that bug too.
I’m going with “good shoot” here, unless he was in an urban area. In which case, a good shot from the hose might be a more prudent way to exterminate that bug.
GPS spoofers work pretty good for this.
You can send the drone at high speed into a wall without creating any forensic evidence.
Shoot, Shovel and SHUT UP (the drone, that is).
$1800 spent to look at a pretty teen girl sunbathing?
For $1795 less, they can probably go to their local swimming pool.
Idiots.
I’d put my money on charges dropped and the pervs learning an $1800 lesson.
Sam
Full moon brings out idiots in day as well.
I’m a long-time reader of GSL.com and generally support the stories written here but believe this story is inaccurate and slanted. My son and I recently purchased our first drone, a DJI Phantom Pro 3. Like Boggs, we are just learning to fly. Few things we have learned:
1. The drone app stores the flight profile on the smartphone so you can re-play where you flew at what altitude after your flight. This is relevant because David Boggs released this file as shown in this news story – http://www.wdrb.com/story/29675427/drone-owner-responds-to-claims-of-privacy-invasion and the flight profile replay contradicts Merideth’s story that Bogg’s drone was hovering at 10 feet. He was in fact hovering for ~30 seconds but at about 270ft.
2. The lens is ultra-wide angle. Again this is relevant because the claim is that he was watching a girl sunbathing. At 270ft, while you can easily see someone laying down, I couldn’t make out any detail of my 5’5 son laying on our deck when at 150ft much less 270ft.
3. Boggs showed the text msgs from his phone with msgs back and forth from a friend about flying over his house. Meredith’s house is in the flight path. In those msgs, Boggs indicates he can fly there as long as it doesn’t get too windy. While drones are easy to fly, especially at higher altitudes, there is some skill involved at lower altitudes since GPS altitude isn’t as accurate as x/y location. Once you can no longer see the drone it is dangerous to go as low as 10 ft especially in wind and would take some skill that a new drone pilot simply lacks. Here the drone was out of sight because it is small and was 1450ft away. As a result the claim that he flew down to an altitude of 10ft and even went below a canopy to peep completely lacks credibility.
Finally, Meredith is quoted as saying “Our rights are being trampled daily, Not on a local level only — but on a state and federal level. We need to have some laws in place to handle these kind of things.” As a gun owner the last thing I want is more laws in place restricting my freedoms. I agree that our rights are being trampled daily but it is precisely because of all the new bullshit laws they come out with that we lose our rights. Those new laws seldom protect our rights!
Let’s make sure we support shootings based on the facts and from my perspective this one hasn’t met the bar for me without more facts.
Interesting, but I have to wonder how effective 7.5 birdshot would be at 270 feet. Not only does that sound like an extremely difficult shot to make, but 270 feet straight up sounds like it wouldn’t even have the energy to do any damage.
Correct me if I’m wrong of course.
Yeah, I’m not buying it.
I did that math too and in the process ran across this handy site. https://www.hunter-ed.com/washington/studyGuide/Know-Your-Shotguns-Range/20105001_700046708
Based on the numbers I ran, this is easily within the range of 7.5 birdshot. I was going to run a test this past weekend but ended up spending most of my time in the hospital instead. Argh. One thing to remember though is that like a helicopter it doesn’t take much to bring down a quadcopter because of the high speed of the props.
I meant to add that NSCA shooting rules call for 300 yards (900 feet) to be safe with 7.5 shot.