A 65-year-old Virginia woman blew a drone out of the sky with her 20-gauge shotgun. Jennifer Youngman, who lives out in rural The Plains, Virginia, was outside cleaning her shotguns (a .410 and a 20 gauge) when she heard a buzzing sound.
“I go on minding my business, working on my .410 shotgun and the next thing I know I hear ‘bzzzzz,’” she said. “This thing is going down through the field, and they’re buzzing like you would scaring the cows.” Youngman told Ars Technica that she is a seasoned skeet shooter and deer hunter.
“This drone disappeared over the trees and I was cleaning away, there must have been a five- or six-minute lapse, and I heard the ‘bzzzzz,’” she said, noting that she specifically used 7.5 birdshot. “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.”
Youngmen said the drone owners began to approach her and she warned them the cops were on their way. “They got in their fancy ostentatious car—I don’t know if it was a Range Rover or a Hummer—and left.” Youngman and other property owners believe they were paparazzi who were looking to get some pictures of movie star Robert Duvall, who lives in the area.
The Fauquier County Sheriff’s Office had no record of a formal complaint about the drone “accident.”
Youngman said she believed in 2nd Amendment rights and also was irritated that people would try to disturb Duvall.
“The man is a national treasure and they should leave him the fuck alone,” she said.
I love this woman.
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