I am currently in the process of filing a restraining order and the city is pursuing a felony/misdemeanor against one of my neighbors that I have never met before, before they approached me, brandished a weapon, and threatened to kill me for flying my phantom too close to their house. You would think I live in a dangerous neighborhood, but it is quite the opposite in one of the most expensive zip codes (socal).
I am posting this here as a warning. When the incident happened, I was with a few friends. Had I been alone, who knows what could have transpired.
I am not advocating carrying weapons, but I would suggest that you think about protecting yourself every time you fly.
I hesitated in posting this because I didn't want to worry anyone, but I convinced myself that I would want to know, so I am sharing.
Here are a few details of the incident for those that are curious:
Taking off from directly in front of my condo. It is a crowded neighborhood, housing with hardly any yards, in a small-hills area. I am flying looking at brush and open land, some of the only open land near my condo, at about the middle of a hill, on top of which is a house. I am at approximately 60-80 feet in the air (AGL), much lower than the height of the house. I then start to go straight up at about 3-5mph to a height of about 300 feet. During this I pass by the house on the hill at about 30-50 yards from the closest side of the house (the house was at about 100-120ft). Once at that height, I hit the RTH function to show my friends how it can, well, RTH. As it gets above us and starts to descend, a pickup truck pulls up with a man and a woman getting out. They start approaching us spouting nonsense about taking video through their windows. Privacy this, illegal that, "you cannot fly over residential!", etc. After a few minutes of back and forth, they say they are going to call the police. I invited them to and welcomed them to stay and wait. This was mostly a discussion with the wife. They were an older couple, late 50's early 60's. While this was happening the husband had pulled out a steak knife and had it in his hands. He was a safe distance away at this point, but it was borderline time to run in the other direction. Shortly later, they started walking back to their truck and the husband pulled the truck closer to my condo attempting to run over the drone with his car. He aggressively sped up and nearly ran over my girlfriend who picked up the drone because she saw what he was going to be doing. He then veered at her, and she had to duck between cars. I was too far away to do anything about the drone sitting on the ground at the time, but I am thankful she had enough foresight and courage to do all of this without really being in much danger. It was more a show of aggression from the husband driving the truck.
And as the grand finale, as they are backing out of my condo complex, I am at the entrance to the condo complex standing next to the drivers side door, and he reaches in the glove box, pulls out a gun, and says to his wife, "why don't we just kill him?". At this point she was erratic trying to get her husband to leave, covering the gun with her jacket and pulling his arm down. I could tell she was horrified that he was doing it, and at that point, they left and we immediately called the police.
As you can imagine, their story of what happened didn't match mine at all. Luckily I had half a dozen witnesses to the entire thing, otherwise I might be just someone pissed off at the justice system stuck in a he said she said situation. Instead, he is facing a possible felony/misdimeanor and restraining order.
The scariest thing about this is, I wasn't even aware that I had done anything even remotely wrong. When it all started to go down, I was in complete shock that someone was even remotely upset, let alone wanting to kill me. I felt as if I was a safe distance away from all houses when I was flying. With over 10 years of flying under my belt, I have a good idea of what a safe distance is.
So the lesson is, take special care, try to diffuse the situation, and always protect yourself. I hope I am the only person this ever happens to.
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