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.
Cheney Accidentally Shoots Fellow Hunter
Feb 12 4:20 PM US/Eastern
By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
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.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/02/12/D8FNQDG80.html
NO he is NOT.......
Click Click BOOM! LOL
I hope the administration plays this down - let the dems make more out of it than there is.
Yep.
"Yahoo/AP's first headline was wrong and they have corrected it."
AP just wanted to give their moonbat employees and moonbats everywhere a momento of a headline even if it wasn't true and had to be changed minutes later.
This will become a bumpersticker for some of the "tolerant" left.
Waiting for the headline "Dick, Whittington, and His Gat"
Oh, Brother. The libs are going to twist themselves in knots over this one!
Hold your kids tight, and your guns even tighter, LOL!
Well, duh, he took it 68 years ago, they probably covered, "here's the safety, here's where you put the bullet, here's the trigger". (LOL - I know there were no hunter safety classes back then.)
Caption for picture:
You wascally wabbit you!!!
DU also wants a brain. Doesn't look like its gonna happen though.
LOL......it sure is!
That was a rare exception where I found Kerry funny. Of course he stole someone's joke and as a U.S. Senator shouldn't be saying stuff like that.
(Almost feel bad pointing this out, but here goes...)Hugh opportunity here:
Cheney steps aside on some pretext,
Condoleezza Rice assumes Vice Presidency.Rice runs in 2008 as incumbant candidate.
Hillary is TOAST.
Here's some possibly less-wild speculation :)
* The spin machine kicked into immediate gear. Note how the initial report that he "shot" the guy had within nanoseconds morphed into him having "sprayed" him "with pellets". Almost makes it sound like fun, eh? ("Hey, Dick, you snarky whippersnapper, next time you spray me I'm gonna spray your chair-warmer, you whippersnappering whippernapper, you!", smiled the elder Whittington, goodnaturedly)
* Being Dick Cheney means being able to shoot your lawyer and get away with it. :)
* It will be business as usual for "Bigtime", with no "repercussions" whatsoever. (to coin a phrase :)
* Seems pretty obvious that Cheney took a "sound shot" at the bushes, where his "friend" was scrounging around for his bird. Classic "slob hunter" behavior. Sad, and stupid. (And along comes Jesse, his "Stay out da BUSHES" rant rife with renewed vigor...)
* The RKBA is TOAST ("Even a skilled marksman, a careful, life-long hunter, noted for his responsible firearms handling skills, is a risk to innocent bystanders. Clearly we must enact 'sensible' gun control legislation. Therefore, this morning, I have dashed off the following 350 page bill that I am submitting, with 50 co-sponsors...")
Yeah, my guess he was quail hunting with an assault weapon.
Nothing against the VEEP but don't pull the trigger unless you have a clear field of fire. Maybe the other guy should have said something but the VEEP shouldn't have pulled the trig.
"I can only imagine the DU buzz on this...."
Here is one of the funniest:
This will make great fodder for DUmmie FUnnies.
Ewww. I just went over to DU to see what they were saying.
Here's a sample (paraphrased):
It's a cover up, Cheney tried to kill the man.
Glad they didn't shoot the bird but wish he'd of killed the man.
One guy claimed to be a hunter and asked WHAT they were doing hunting in February (Duh -- that's the peak of quail/grouse season)
ALL hunters are killers/murderers.
And on and on. These people are truly delusional.
Usually it's a guy's poor field dog that gets hit. I got my last labrador from a field trial kennel at about 3 years old... years later an xray showed several birdshot pellets in him...
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