A 20-year-old Pasco man won’t serve any jail time for crashing a drone onto the roof of Seattle’s Space Needle on New Year’s Eve 2016, but he’s been ordered by a Seattle, Washington Municipal judge to forfeit the aircraft, according to court records.
Cole Kelley pleaded guilty Tuesday to a gross misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment, acknowledging he “flew a drone in a manner that caused a likelihood of harm to persons or property,” court records say.
He received a 364-day suspended sentence, was fined $250 and ordered not to operate drones, the records say.
Pictures show the boy with a large gash several centimeters long across his face, from the right of his nose to the top of his left eyebrow.
In the past year alone, media accounts from five continents have documented dozens of people saved from danger thanks to drones. Rescuers have used drones to drop buoys to struggling swimmers in Australia and Brazil; England and America; and find stranded people in farm fields, along rivers and on mountain trails.