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El Reg reports
A father who shot down a drone that was hovering over his family home in Kentucky has been cleared of all charges.
Dad-of-two William Merideth thought the quadcopter was spying on his daughters in their yard in Hillview and blasted the gizmo out of the sky with a shotgun. That earned him the title "Drone Slayer" from pro-privacy quarters.
Merideth was arrested shortly after in July and charged with criminal mischief and wanton endangerment.
He appeared before the Bullitt County District Court on Monday this week and after a two and a half hour hearing, Judge Rebecca Ward dismissed the case against him.
"I was in my right to protect my family and my property", said Merideth.
The judge agreed, telling the court: "He had a right to shoot at this drone."
David Boggs, who owned the downed drone, was hoping to get the cost of the machine in compensation and said he will ask the Commonwealth's Attorney's office to take the case to a grand jury--or consider pursuing a civil case against Merideth.
Previous: Man Arrested for Shooting Down Drone Flying Over His Property
(Score: 1) by cloud.pt on Thursday October 29 2015, @01:54PM
Don't distort the facts. There are effectively 3 testimonials, only 1 states he has solid video evidence that can be verified on request, while the other 2 are based on non-verifiable circumstances. A judge with minimal technical skills (and a conscience, for that matter) would simply say "then show us that proof you say you have", and the other 2 witnesses could very well be sued for false testimony, because the proof is that good.
I would usually accept your argument of 2 different individuals stating the same, or even the fact it was shot down easily.
If only I hadn't seen the video evidence he mentions [youtu.be] . All flight during that video, including the moment you see the drone lose control and fall to the ground (i.e.: when it was actually shot), was done at least at 200ft height.And don't tell me it shows signs of tampering. This is a civil case and you don't find the skills for video tampering laying around in any given Kentucky backyard. It's solid, and only blind people won't acknowledge it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Thursday October 29 2015, @03:00PM
If only I hadn't seen the video evidence he mentions . All flight during that video, including the moment you see the drone lose control and fall to the ground (i.e.: when it was actually shot), was done at least at 200ft height.
No, doesn't look like that to me. Instead, it looks to me like someone who doesn't know how to interpret video evidence. Let's start with the obvious problem. The video is under 90 seconds long. The incident is over a longer time frame:
William Merideth, 47, was relaxing at his home in Hillview, Kentucky, US, on Sunday afternoon when his daughters told him a drone was flying over the neighborhood. The aircraft hovered low in his neighbor's garden, and then swung by his home.
"I went and got my shotgun and I said, 'I'm not going to do anything unless it's directly over my property,'" Merideth told WDRB News on Wednesday.
"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."
Where's the missing video? What this probably means is that there were previous flights. You aren't seeing the whole story here.
Second, there's no actual measurement of altitude in the video. You conflate your opinion of the altitude with what the video actually shows. And third, given that the vehicle was actually shot down, that indicates it probably was not above 200 feet.
Fourth, the current altitude of the vehicle at the time it was shot is irrelevant. The whole point of the two other witnesses is that it establishes that the shooter's opinion that the drone was flying too low over his property was reasonable because others had the same opinion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2015, @03:22PM
Two hundred feet over ground level? At least? At all times?
I call bullshit on at least two levels.
First off, the original complaint from the daughters to their father was that the drone had previously flown low, not that it was particularly low at the time of the shooting. The video provided at that time is substantially irrelevant.
Second, given that there's no guarantee that the drone which is flying at two hundred feet now will remain at two hundred feet, given a plausibly claimed history of doing otherwise, the final video cache is not merely irrelevant in general, but particularly shows that people involved weren't bemused or uninvolved, but actually perturbed - this itself constitutes circumstantial evidence. The mere fact that someone who used some kind of stick to shoot upskirts wasn't doing so at the precise time that a crowd of outraged women beat him so bad he has to eat through a straw doesn't excuse him.
My take on it: man probably commits invasion of privacy, alarming his community. There's no conclusive proof against, and substantial witness and circumstantial evidence to support the idea. One of his victims defends his family from this invasion in a way which carries minimal public risk, does little, and highly directed, damage in the specific service of his family.
Toss the case, and tell the dronerator to pound sand.
I'm also suspicious of the claim that the altitude over ground was all that darned accurate. A shotgun pellet remaining effective after a vertical climb of sixty yards? Even at 100 yards horizontally anything less than buckshot is an annoyance unless it happens to hit your eye. The claim is explicitly that he used birdshot. Birdshot at that kind of altitude is completely ineffective. Breaking clay pigeons with birdshot at over 40 yards isn't reliable, and yet this drone somehow got nailed at 60+ yards vertically?
I don't care what the numbers said, on some deep level they are broken, and the judge was right to toss this case out.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by cloud.pt on Thursday October 29 2015, @04:51PM
More guns to you then.
I hope some day somebody decides to shoot your beautiful Ford Mustang because it was stepping in 1 inch of his lawn. I just hope your family isn't inside the car at the time. Maybe that day you will grasp the amount of 'muricanism you should be saving for times that really matter, instead of being "perturbed" by something you clearly don't understand. Maybe that time you will care about the numbers and the deep level in which they are not broken, because numbers don't lie to defend themselves, unlike weak human beings.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2015, @05:14PM
OK, let's take this slowly. Breathe deeply, and follow closely:
The claim (by the drone operator) is that the altitude of the drone over ground level was at least two hundred feet. Let's take that at face value, with maybe a couple of feet of grace. This claim is disputed, but let's just suppose that he's telling the unadulterated truth on all counts because that's the friendliest possible position to his case.
The undisputed claim is that the drone was grounded after being shot with birdshot.
In the real world, birdshot at 60 yards horizontal might possibly chip paint. Nobody is claiming that the father shot with some kind of Texas-powered supercannon, just a regular old shotgun. At 40 yards, it's well known to shotgunners that it's too darned far to hope to reliably break clay pigeons, and 60 yards makes it that much worse.
Therefore: there is a disconnect between the claims of the drone operator, and the physical reality of the drone's fate. Until that is cleared up, there is no reason to believe those claims, and since civil cases work in terms of the preponderance of evidence, the rational step is for that case to be tossed.
See? No NRA flags waving (I'm not a member) nor even Old Glory (I'm not 'merkin, nor even american, and I'm surprised that you assumed any different), just plain old physics and courtroom logic.
Now, please explain again precisely how this shotgun was fired with magic birdshot that wrecks machinery at distances far beyond those of the expected effective range of normal birdshot. Details, and specifics, if you please.
And no, outrage about guns and obfuscations about what constitutes trespass don't count as details and specifics. I expect to see an analysis of the ballistic coefficient, perhaps mediated by a reasonable guess at air pressure, sectional density, penetration rates, and work of fracture.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday October 29 2015, @05:32PM
Sounds like another "Magic Bullet" scenario to me. Now all we need to do is come up with a good conspiracy theory.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Funny) by khallow on Thursday October 29 2015, @05:54PM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2015, @07:58PM
Seems like a pretty clear dichotomy to me. Either the drone was flying close enough for the birdshot to down it in which case the shooting was justified and Merideth doesn't owe Boggs compensation or it was flying as high as claimed in which case the birdshot couldn't have brought it down and Merideth doesn't owe Boggs compensation.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Thursday October 29 2015, @05:58PM
I hope some day somebody decides to shoot your beautiful Ford Mustang because it was stepping in 1 inch of his lawn.
And I hope someday you get mugged by common sense. Earlier, you had written that you own firearms. I think given the number of times you've shot yourself in your foot with your keyboard in this discussion, maybe you should give up those weapons before you hurt yourself with them.