A Kentucky man shot down a $1,800 drone hovering his backyard in Hillview, Ky. Sunday evening and was later arrested and charged with first degree criminal mischief and first-degree wanton endangerment.
"My daughter comes in and says, 'Dad, there's a drone out here flying,'" William H. Merideth, 47, told Fox's Kentucky affiliate WDRB Tuesday. He shot the drone, which crashed in a field near his yard.
The owner of the drone claimed that he was trying to take pictures of a friends house. However, Merideth, who has two daughters, felt the was shooting justified because it had hovered over one of them who was sunbathing.
"Was he looking at the girls? Was he looking for something to steal?" he said. "It's an invasion of privacy."
Shortly after the firing, the drone's owner, along with some friends, came to complain, and Merideth recounted, according to People.
"They asked me, 'Are you the S-O-B that shot my drone?' and I said, 'Yes I am,'" Merideth said. "I had my 40-millimeter Glock on me, and they started toward me and I told them, 'If you cross my sidewalk, there's gonna be another shooting.'"
The men hastily retreated to the car and waited for police to arrive.
"His only comment was that he hoped I had a big checkbook because his drone cost $1,800," Merideth added, Ars Technica reported.
Merideth was later arrested and charged with criminal mischief and wanton endangerment before being released the following day. He claims that he is looking into legal action because, as he notes, the drone hovering over his yard was an invasion of privacy, and he only fired his weapon into the air.
"Our rights are being trampled daily," he said. "Not on a local level only - but on a state and federal level. We need to have some laws in place to handle these kind of things."
