Man charged in use of camera drone at accident
By Holly ZachariahThe Columbus Dispatch
Kele Stanley has been charged with a felony because officials say he refused to land the camera-equipped drone that he had been guiding over a traffic crash scene, but he says he is no idiot.
A videographer and remote-controlled airplane hobbyist, Stanley admits that he twice flew his remote-controlled hexacopter — which looks more like a robotic spider than a hobby plane and costs about $4,000 — about 75 feet above where a pickup had hit a tree on Saturday morning in Clark County’s Moorefield Township.
But he disputes the law-enforcement version that says he refused to bring his drone down when authorities ordered him to because a medical helicopter was about to land to transport the injured driver.
“I am not an idiot,” said Stanley, who said he was shooting the video as a hobby and would have turned it over to local television stations, as he has done before. “If I had known that Care Flight was on the way, my helicopter would have come down immediately. There wouldn’t have been any dispute.”
Stanley, a 31-year-old copy-machine repairman who videotapes weddings as a side business, posted his $425 bail after being arrested by Clark County deputies about 10 a.m. Saturday. He had his initial court appearance yesterday on a felony charge of obstructing official business and misdemeanor charges of misconduct at an emergency and disorderly conduct.
His case already is drawing the attention of those interested in the drone issue, the regulation of which is under debate at both the state and federal level.
There currently are no regulations in Ohio governing private use of the unmanned aircraft. The federal government has said that law-enforcement agencies must receive special permits to use them but commercial use — by real-estate agents or corporations, for example, that want a bird’s-eye view of something — or the hobbyist’s use is so far unregulated fair game.
Peter Sachs is a Connecticut lawyer, a (real) helicopter pilot and a drone enthusiast who runs the Drone Law Journal. He’s a critic of the Federal Aviation Administration’s assertion that it has a right to control such use.
He has watched Stanley’s case play out in social media and, judging by the expensive equipment that Stanley was using, Sachs said it appears he is “far from amateur.” He said he can’t imagine that anyone would continue to fly knowing he could be interfering with a helicopter coming in to save a life.
Sachs said the drones simply make some people nervous, so they try to stop them. He sees it as a First Amendment issue: “Anyone can take a view from a public place of anything happening publicly.”
Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly didn’t return a call seeking comment, but the criminal complaint against Stanley says he was told both by fire officials and a deputy that he had to stop flying and why.
Stanley said he knew there was no law against what he was doing, so he put the helicopter back up after being approached by a deputy. But he says the first time he heard about Care Flight was after he already had brought the drone down a second time, and he didn’t fly it again.
Sachs said those on both sides of the drone issue will be watching the case.
“If he did do something wrong, it should come out,” Sachs said. “And if he didn’t, that story needs to be told, too. Drones have an unfair, bad connotation surrounding them.”
The sheriff’s office hasn’t released the name or condition of the man hurt in the crash.
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