Judge rules man had right to shoot down drone over his house

It was a case that gripped the nation. Or at least Kentucky. Should it have temporarily escaped your pressured memory, William Merideth in July said he saw a drone flying above his property in Hillview, Kentucky. He believed it was spying on his 16-year-old daughter who was sunbathing in the garden. So he took out his shotgun and blasted the drone out of the sky. He was arrested for wanton endangerment and criminal mischief. Now a Kentucky court has declared Merideth an innocent man. Bullitt County District Court Judge Rebecca Ward on Monday dismissed all charges against Merideth, reported local TV station WDRB-TV.  The drone's owner, David Boggs, had produced flight data that insisted his machine had been flying higher than Merideth had claimed. The judge, however, seems not a fan of big data. She's a woman of the people. She declared that two human witnesses saw the drone below the tree line. This evidence was, to her, conclusive. To her, this was an invasion of Merideth's privacy...more