Posted on 02/12/2006 12:46:46 PM PST by bayourant
Edited on 02/12/2006 2:10:43 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday.
Harry Whittington, 78, was "alert and doing fine" after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong.
Armstrong said Whittington was mostly injured on his right side, with the pellets hitting his cheek, neck and chest, and was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
Whittington was in stable condition Sunday, said Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System.
Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said the vice president was with Whittington, a lawyer from Austin, Texas, and his wife at the hospital on Sunday afternoon.
Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shot at a covey of quail late afternoon on Saturday.
Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and found a second covey.
Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong told the Associated Press in an interview.
"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."
The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
She said Whittington was bleeding but not very seriously injured, and Cheney was very apologetic.
"It broke the skin," she said. "It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that."
She said emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington, holding his face and cleaning up the blood.
"Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been," she said. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."
Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the ranch to hunt about once a year. She said Whittington is a regular, too, but she thought it was the first time the two men hunted together.
"This is something that happens from time to time. You now, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong.
___
Associated Press writer Paul Weber in Dallas contributed to this report.
Wonder why if it happened yesterday it's just being reported today?
It was a beeber message - to the Iran VP.
I wonder if this Whittington is associated with the Whittington Center of the NRA out west--Arizona, I think?
Great new tagline!
He shot a laywer.... that ought to be a plus???
This is going to be a big deal I am guessing....
Hopefully it was steel shot, the lead shot can be hazardous to your health. :)
According to Fox News, this actually happened on Saturday.
pretty detailed article here about the incident. Even AP is making it sound like no big deal. They did manage to slip in a picture of Cheney with a rifle in hand though. Jerks.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/02/12/D8FNQDG80.html
Fox says big adieu about nothing
Dick, Dick! Sigh.
Lawyer season ended!!
You are not supposed to hunt them till Law Day, May First. They are fat and plump by then, and have not started the Breeding Season.
(Ever try to CLEAN one of those things, though??)
Ouch! That had to hurt.
Glad no one was killed, though.
The 78 year-old must have forgotten everything he ever learned in Hunter Safety Class.
And Rove is sitting in his chair laughing at everyone because, once again, another of his plots has shifted the MSM's focus.
I haven't seen any reports outlining exactly what happened, but it's a cinch that somebody did something stupid. People making light of it is to be expected, I guess, but there's absolutely no excuse for a hunting "accident." In almost every case, there was negligence on somebody's part. It's fortunate that the guy wasn't killed or seriously hurt--it does happen, even with birdshot if the victim is unlucky enough to be hit in the wrong place. This could have been a real tragedy, not to mention a black eye for the administration.
And before anybody jumps on me, I've been a hunter all my life. I have a cardinal rule that I don't hunt with people who are unsafe, and right now I'd have serious doubts about whether I'd want to be in a hunting party with some of these people. Flame away.
"wish to hell it had been Ahmadinejad rather than Whittington I was hunting with"!
If they are properly COOKED!
No great loss. The guy he shot was a lawyer.
Proof positive that Cheney does not believe in gun control ;-)
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