Shotgun Blasts Drone “To Smithereens”

A Virginia woman destroyed a drone with a shotgun shot after she had enough of the aircraft flying near her property. Was she right in her decision?

Shotgun Blasts Drone “To Smithereens”

A Virginia woman had enough of a drone flying near her property and took action.

Jennifer Youngman, a longtime resident of Fauquier County, became irritated in mid-June with two men flying a drone above her neighbor’s property, the Fauquier Times reports, and when the wind pushed the drone over her pasture, she shot it with her shotgun.

“They were going a little too fast and they went over my airspace. I had my .20-gauge there, so I put two 7.5 birdshot shells in it, and there you are,” she told the newspaper.

Though Youngman doesn’t know who the men flying the drone were, the Fauquier Times reports she lives next to Hollywood icon Robert Duvall. Youngman said a black Range Rover parked in front of Duvall’s residence and the two men got out, set up a card table and began flying the drone.

Youngman told the paper the drone was disturbing her cows, so while she sat on her porch and cleaned her .410 bore and .20-gauge shotguns the frustration continued to build.

“This drone disappeared over the trees and I was cleaning away, there must have been a 5- or 6-minute lapse, and I heard the ‘bzzzzz,’" she told Ars Technica. “I loaded my [20-gauge] shotgun and took the safety off, and this thing came flying over my trees. I don’t know if they lost command or if they didn’t have good command, but the wind had picked up. It came over my airspace, 25 or 30 feet above my trees, and hovered for a second. I blasted it to smithereens.”

Following the kill shot, Youngman told the Fauguier Times the two men yelled at her before fleeing in their Range Rover.

“They were kind of mad, but they knew to not come on my property,” she told the magazine.

Legally, Youngman’s situation could get more interesting.

Yahoo! News reports drones are technically aircrafts, according to FAA classifications, and interfering with drone flight is a federal crime. However, no legal ramifications came in the other two known cases of drones being shot with guns.



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