While flying a drone near an aircraft is bad enough, one California man has now been arrested for crashing his drone into a police helicopter.
On Thursday, Los Angeles resident Andrew Rene Hernandez was officially charged in the airborne collision, which occurred in late September as an LAPD chopper was on its way to investigate a burglary. After the pilot unsuccessfully attempted to avoid the remote-controlled device, the drone smashed into the helicopter's nose, damaging its bottom cowlings and antenna, according to an incident report.
"If the drone had struck the helicopter’s main rotor instead of the fuselage, it could have brought the helicopter down," the report reads.
Hernandez is now facing a federal charge of 'unsafe operation of an unmanned aircraft,' marking it the very firsttime this kind of charge has been filed against someone... And ironically enough, Hernandez's arrest happened in the middle of National Drone Safety Awareness Week.
"It's important for parents and for the general public to just be aware. We don't want critical incidents happening. We don't want lives at stake over people operating drones," said Kristi Johnson, the Assistant Director in charge at the Los Angeles Field Office for the FBI.
Read the full report on FOX 11.