DJI Inspire 2 drone shot out of the sky in Ohio

[Day_Walker]

Thats the point though. Why does he even know what a random guys wife looks like?

Maybe cause they're neighbours

 

[The Devil's Advocate]

Depends on the laws of his locality.
Unless he was off in some country area, if he was within city limits, it's illegal to discharge a weapon.
The drone pilot may have been flying illegally as well "it was late evening And I would not be spying on her I’ll just leave it at that"
The pilot claims he was flying for commercial purposes, if he had the proper permissions I'm not sure why he wouldn't be getting any help.
As for it being over the person's house, this also depends on the laws in their locality.
Here in Virginia Beach, they only recently passed a law that if you pilot a drone over a person's house, and the property owner asks you to move it and you don't, it is considered a misdemeanor offense. This is due to privacy issues and not due to any implication that a property owner owns the airspace above their house, which simply isn't true.
If that were the case people could shoot at all manner of aircraft over their house. There are too many factors that aren't detailed in the OP to really go into whether or not it was 100% legal to shoot a drone down. My guess is no, mainly because in most places it isn't legal to discharge a weapon for the reason of shooting at a drone.

this kept creeping in my brain, seeing how i have a drone.. it's pretty much impossible to not fly it over a house, in the city or any residence.. by the time you get up 50 ft, you already see the whole neighborhood, and 20 ft down the road is the next "property"

so i came up with this:


It's a bit confusing at the moment. The FAA has defined "navigable airspace" to be 500 ft for urban and suburban areas. In rural areas, it's 360 feet above the ground or above the tallest structure in the flying area. And since the FAA has the 400 ft ceiling for drones, which suggests that you would need the permission of the landowner to fly over his area. You can see the citations for those limits in the Wikipedia article for Air rights.






so the sniper guy with the ugly wife is absolutely correct... and also, this is why you can't shoot down planes and other craft... but you CAN shoot down a drone, if it's flying lower than 360 ft


edit: going through this thread.. there's a shytload of cases of things like this.. seems you're right.. it's all up in the air

Flying Over Private Property is Illegal?

 

[The Phoenix]

If it really was 168 FT in the air how could someone shoot it down? Regular joes have aim like that? Prob was being a creep and spying on people.

Based on the pic, it looks like it was hit with a shotty. Those shotgun shells spread wide and they do travel far so you can hit shyt in the air without great aim. That's how they duck hunt. They just need get that birdshot in the right location and 168 feet is well in range of those guns.