Liveleaks has published an iPhone video taken by a Connecticut man of a woman assaulting him for flying a video-enabled quadrocopter on a public beach. The man originally posted the video to YouTube, but it has been taken down by the service, and his account has been suspended “as a violation of YouTube's policy prohibiting content designed to harass, bully, or threaten.”
Calling him a “pervert” after calling police to report him for “taking pictures of people with a helicopter plane” and "trying to upload them," the woman, 23-year old Andrea Mears, lashed out at the pilot as he was putting his quadrocopter away, knocking him to the ground and tearing his shirt.
When police arrived, Mears claimed the man was taking inappropriate pictures of people sunbathing on the beach and that he had assaulted her. But after the pilot showed the surreptitiously captured video of her assault on him, she was arrested.
On the RCgroups.com forum, the pilot posted a description of what he had done and the aftermath of the situation:
I never went below 50 feet save for take off/landing, then after the end of my last flight, some crazy lady came over and started taking pictures of me, and dialed 911 for the 3rd time in 15 minutes. They basically said that they'd send someone when one gets free during each of the 3 calls she made, she decided they didn't care enough about someone obeying the law so when no one was around she assaulted me and she decided to stop when she got a phone call. I called the police to report the assault, and boy was the response big...10 or more vehicles arrived (cops, DEEP, and an ambulance). The police approached me very aggressively, believing her full story, and before anything else was said I brought up something that she missed— the fact that the cell phone in my hand has a camera, that was recording. I had video evidence that she went nuts completely unprovoked, and was the one that assaulted me. She was then charged with assault, and breach of peace and I gave the cops a copy of the video for their prosecution. I then also showed them my last flight where you can make out her colorful shirt getting up from the beach then following it until it lands which proved that she lied when claiming that she asked me to stop flying before calling the police.
At the end of it all, one of the officers said to me basically, "Flying that thing the way you were is fine, you're not in any trouble. You can come back and fly, but just be aware that some people can be alarmed."
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