Man Shoots Drone Out Of Sky: William Merideth Arrested After Destruction Of Flying Technology
A Kentucky man shot a drone down, showing his intolerance for the small flying devices. Apparently, the law was not on his side when he rid himself of what he perceived to be an annoyance in his yard.
When William Merideth first saw the small machine near his Hillview home, he allegedly retrieved his shotgun and waited for the drone to come into his yard. Unfortunately for the owners of the drone, it did, and he considered it an invasion of privacy.
At first, William hadn’t been outside, but his daughter had allegedly been sunbathing when she spotted the drone and went inside to tell him about it. He didn’t do anything at first, other than grab his shotgun.
“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 drone that the man shot down had allegedly disappeared momentarily when William’s daughter waved it off, according to the Washington Times. When it came back and entered the yard, that was when he allegedly took action.
When four men showed up claiming to have owned the drone, William defended what he’d done.
“I had my 40 mm Glock on me and they started toward me and I told them, ‘If you cross my sidewalk, there’s gonna be another shooting.'”
According to CNet, both parties were wrong in what they had done. When William had fired on the $1,800 flying machine, he violated a Kentucky Revised Statute against firing a gun within city limits. However, the FCC has regulations against flying a drone near people or stadiums, endangering lives, and has fines ready for violators. The man who shot the drone in his backyard ended up arrested for first-degree criminal mischief and first-degree wanton endangerment.
William Merideth of Hillview, Kentucky gets arrested after shooting drone over his property http://t.co/KpbEOa1GUM
— Andy Raffalski (@andyraffalski) July 31, 2015
William Merideth still feels the need to fight for what he did, claiming he had done nothing wrong in protecting his privacy.
“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 [kinds] of things.”
“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.”
What do you think should be done about the Kentucky man who shot a drone for hovering over his yard?
[Image via Sean Gallup / Getty Images]
