| Title | Man Arrested for Shooting Down Drone Flying Over His Property | |
| Date | Sunday August 02 2015, @09:38PM | |
| Author | janrinok | |
| Topic | ||
| from the not-the-first-and-not-the-last dept. | ||
Ars has a story about a man in Kentucky who took skeet shooting to a new level, being arrested after shooting down a drone that he says was hovering over his property. While this is not the first time this has happened, this seems to be the first time someone was arrested for doing it.
Since that article was published new information has been published that indicates that this guy was a better shot than he said he was. The second article points out:
[In 1946], the Supreme Court decided in a case known as United States v. Causby that that a farmer in North Carolina could assert property rights up to 83 feet in the air. In that case, American military aircraft were flying above his farm, disturbing his sleep and his chickens. As such, the court found he was owed compensation.
However, the same decision also specifically mentioned a "minimum safe altitude of flight" at 500 feet—leaving the zone between 83 feet and 500 feet as a legal grey area.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found an update to this story, however:.
The pilot of the drone shot down Sunday evening over a Kentucky property has now come forward with video provided to Ars, seemingly showing that the drone wasn't nearly as close as the property owner made it out to be. However, the federal legal standard for how far into the air a person's private property extends remains in dispute.
According to the telemetry provided by David Boggs, the drone pilot, his aircraft was only in flight for barely two minutes before it was shot down. The data also shows that it was well over 200 feet above the ground before the fatal shots fired by William Merideth. David Boggs provided this video to Ars, which he describes as his "statement."
Boggs told Ars that this was the maiden voyage of his DJI Phantom 3, and that his intentions were not to snoop on anyone—his aim was simply to fly over a vacationing friend's property, a few doors away from Merideth's property in Hillview, Kentucky, south of Louisville.
"The truth is that this man lied and he's doubling down," Boggs said. "The video speaks for itself." Merideth, meanwhile, continues to maintain that the drone flew 20 feet over a neighbor's house before ascending to "60 to 80 [feet] above me."
I wonder if it would be legal for me to install a Phalanx gun in my backyard to defend my property from drones.
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printed from SoylentNews, Man Arrested for Shooting Down Drone Flying Over His Property on 2024-04-24 22:52:36