FAA investigating teen’s gun-toting drone

FAA investigating teen’s gun-toting drone

Published 22 July 2015

 

 

An 18-year-old Connecticut man may have run afoul of federal aviation regulation after posting a video on YouTube showing a small drone hovering about ten of fifteen feet above ground in a wooded area while a gun strapped to it was firing shots. The FAA said Tuesday it was investigating whether Austin Haughwout of Clinton violated the agency’s regulations, which ban the careless or reckless operation of a model aircraft.

An 18-year-old Connecticut man may have run afoul of federal aviation regulation after posting a video on YouTube showing a small drone hovering about ten of fifteen feet above ground in a wooded area while a gun strapped to it was firing shots.
The FAA said Tuesday it was investigating whether Austin Haughwout of Clinton violated the agency’s regulations, which ban the careless or reckless operation of a model aircraft.
The Washington Post reports that Haughwout’s father told a local TV station last week that his son built the drone with the help of a Central Connecticut State University professor. The 14-second video shows a four-propeller drone with a semiautomatic handgun strapped on top hovering as it fires four shots in a wooded area.
The FAA said it is cooperating with Clinton police in the investigation.
Haghwout made news last year when police charged a woman with assault after she physically confronted him when he was flying a drone at a state beach. Andrea Mears of Westbrook, who became irritated with Haughwout’s drone buzzing her and her family, was sentenced to probation in July 2014. A video Haughwout posted showed Mears calling him a pervert, striking him, and ripping his shirt.
Haughwout told the court that he had been using the remote-controlled quadcopter to get footage of the landscape from about fifty feet above the beach when Mears attacked him.