A screenshot from security footage showing a drone scoping out a Westsyde home in Kamloops, Sept. 25, 2020.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED / Ryan Franke
September 28, 2020 - 1:05 PM
A Kamloops couple is feeling unnerved today after spotting an unidentified drone spying on their home late at night.
At around 11:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25, Westsyde resident Ryan Franke noticed something odd flying outside his front window and realized it was a drone.
"(It was) next to the car looking in the window, and then hovered right in front of me," he said. "It came so close to the window at one point it cut the strings on two (hanging) hummingbird feeders."
He said the drone was in front of the home for just under five minutes.
"I threw a beer at it at some point, but I missed," he said.
After awhile, he said it just left on its own.
The following morning, Franke pulled up his security camera footage and showed it to his girlfriend Shayla Skates, who had been sleeping at the time.
She said she was shocked it had come close enough to their home to cut down her hummingbird feeders.
"I feel violated," she said. "Who knows what this person has recorded of me, how many times this drone has been recording my house, me, my child."
This isn't the first reported instance of sneaky drones checking out homes in Kamloops. In addition to half a dozen commenters on a Skates' Facebook post about the incident, a Kamloops woman had a similar experience last year.
Dominique Embury was at home the evening of Dec. 18, 2019 she saw a small black drone hovering outside her window.
Her security footage showed the drone hovering near each of their vehicles before taking off to the end of the street. It returned, hovered near the vehicles again at license plate level, and then watched Embury in her living room for nearly two minutes.
Franke said the drone that he spotted Sept. 25 was about 12 inches wide and 12 inches deep with four propellers, a battery pack and a camera.
According to a map made by the National Research Council Canada, basic drone flights are prohibited within a 1.9-kilometre radius of the Royal Inland Hospital and within a 5.6-kilometre radius from the Kamloops Airport.
Drones over 250 grams are to be flown by a certified drone pilot and marked with a registration number. Collecting personal information, such as license plates and an image of a person’s face, can have legal implications.
To see the full privacy guidelines for drones in Canada, click here.
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