One operator flew his drone dangerously close to a passenger planeon its final approach to a Dallas airport.
Another stopped fire-fighting helicopters from extinguishingwildfires. One even dropped 65.4 grams of marijuana, 6.6 grams of heroin, and 144.5 grams of tobacco into a crowded prison yard.
And in a “drunken misadventure,” a National Geospatial Intelligence Agency employee crashed a drone onto the White House lawn. The Secret Service could have destroyed that drone.
But if your neighbor’s drone comes onto your lawn, and if it is equipped with a camera or some unwelcome item, can you shoot it down without being arrested?
A teenage girl was sunbathing in her backyard in Hillview, Ky. when she saw a drone equipped with a camera hovering overhead, something which she, quite reasonably, found creepy. She alerted her father, who recalls:
I went and got my shotgun and I said, “I’m not going to do anything unless it’s directly over my property.” 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.The father defends his decision:
You know, when you’re in your own property, within a six-foot privacy fence, you have the expectation of privacy. We don’t know if he was looking at the girls. We don’t know if he was looking for something to steal. To me, it was the same as trespassing.For defending against the unknown, he was arrested and charged with felony wanton endangerment and criminal mischief.
And he’s not alone.
A New Jersey resident who shot down a neighbor’s drone was arrested and charged with...
