A homemade hexacopter drone had a run in with a trigger-happy neighbor with a shotgun in Modesto, Calif. The result… a court battle over the costs to repair the gadget. Eric Joe had only gotten about three minutes of airtime with his drone before his neighbor and aspiring Modesto City School Board candidate Brett McBay knocked it out of the sky with buckshot. Via Ars Technica:
“When I went out to go find it, I saw him come out shotgun-in-hand,” Joe told Ars by phone on Thursday. The man found himself face-to-face with his parents’ neighbor, Brett McBay.
“I asked: ‘Did you shoot that thing?’ He said, ‘Yeah, did we get it?’”
Joe claimed that McBay said: “I thought it was a CIA surveillance device.” No matter the reason, the drone pilot wanted to resolve this encounter quickly and civilly (“I didn’t want to get argumentative with a guy with a shotgun,” Joe said). He went back inside and inspected the aircraft. It wouldn’t be flying again.
Joe sent McBay a bill for $700 in damaged parts. McBay countered with an offer to pay $350 and advised him to “let us know your testing surveillance equipment in our area.” From there, the disagreement spiraled into a court case, which Joe won after proving the drone had never entered McBay’s property, and that McBay had a history of discharging firearms in the direction of his family’s house.
McBay has yet to pay the $850 awarded in the case, leaving Eric Joe pondering more legal action to collect. No word on if Joe still plans to fly his drone around the family property. Considering he just successfully sued the neighbor with an itchy trigger finger, he might want to consider other, safer airspaces.
(via Ars Technica)