man who was piloting a drone that collided with a firefighting aircraft working on the Palisades fire has agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, pay a fine and complete community service, federal prosecutors said Friday.
Peter Tripp Akemann, 56, of Culver City was charged with unsafe operation of an unmanned aircraft. He could still face up to a year in federal prison, prosecutors said.
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The drone, which authorities say was flying in restricted airspace on Jan. 9, put a fist-sized hole in the left wing of a Super Scooper — a massive fixed-wing plane that can drop large amounts of water onto a fire. The collision knocked the plane out of commission for about five days and destroyed the drone.
“Like a lot of individuals, he was curious about what was happening in that area,” acting U.S. Atty. Joseph T. McNally said on Friday. “The problem with that… is with the amount of firefighting planes you have in that area dropping so they can get water in the Pacific Ocean it interferes with those operations. It’s not the time to fly drones anytime that we have these emergencies in Southern California.”
- As part of the plea agreement, Akemann agreed to pay full restitution to the government of Quebec, Canada, which supplied the plane, and the company that repaired the plane. It cost at least $65,169 to fix the aircraft, prosecutors said.
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