Shooter Still Unidentified

What was supposed to have been a flight to capture the sunset over Oliver Springs, TN west of Knoxville ended with a badly damaged DJI Inspire 2 drone crashing to the ground on property belonging to a church.

Ars Technica reports that the aircraft belonged to Brad Jones. He was flying his aircraft near his home when he heard a gunshot. The first shot missed, and he brought the aircraft back over his own property. The when he ventured back west, a second shot hit the drone, and it went down on the property of the Coalfield Seventh Day Adventist Church, which is next door to a home where young children were playing in the yard.

A neighbor also in his front yard exclaimed "That hit it! You just got shot! It's going to crash!"

Which it did. Jones found his drone with a bullet hole in one of the drone's motors, and the impact broke the left landing gear.

Jones suspects that it a neighbor, Doug Lively, shot the drone, but Lively denied to local police that he had pulled the trigger. Jones said he flew the same route nearly every day, and his aircraft never flew over Lively's property. "I looked back at my flight log. I never once crossed his property," Jones to Ars.

When Jones asked Lively if he had shot down his drone, Jones denied it, saying "I heard some shots over yonder," but also admitted he "didn't like the damn thing." Lively told a sheriff's deputy who responded to a 911 call that he had been shooting a .22 caliber pistol in his back yard earlier that day, but he did not shoot down the drone.

Jones said most of the land he flies over belongs to his extended family, and he's never before had a complaint about the aircraft. He said he's not spoken to Lively since the incident, and he has also not flown any drone since Easter Sunday.

(Image from file)

FMI: Original Report