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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.
If that's the spin they're putting on it, W-O-W!
A shooting victim is "at-fault" for getting shot?!?!?
I guess RHIP after all.
I'd hate to get rear-ended by the Cheney motorcade while I was stopped at a red light. I'd not only get hospitalized, but I'd get ticketed too, for "causing the accident!
Anybody wanna lay odds on the chance of any "normal"-class citizen managing to pull off an "it was the other guy's fault" (that you shot him) defense -- and getting away with it?
(My guess is that not only would you lose, but you'd also get sanctioned eleven ways to Sunday for insulting the Court's intelligence and wasting its time with that "novel approach to a shooting defense.")
Well I would not call Deer Hunters smarter, they are just after a bigger target that cannot fly away from you. My former brother in law had one foot shot and had to be partially amputated by an idiot Hunter that mistook him for a Deer. For years my sister joked that "Her man had a foot and a half". You never know when someone that you are Hunting with will have a brain fart and do something incredibly dangerous and stooopid. Bird Hunting is totally different than deer Hunting, and this is much ado about an old geezer that messed up. Hunters really do not take this very seriously, they know you take your chances in almost any sport. I am sure Mary Jo would have rather been shot with bird shot than left for dead by a perverted Drunk.
Interesting times for birds.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1574373/posts
BIRDS DISCHARGE ON COURIC: NBC OLYMPIC COVERAGE OFF TO MESSY START
ROTFLMAO!
In an amazing 180, Hillary has already arranged for several duck hunting trips to Ohio, months before the scheduled September '08 photo-op.
LOL -- I sent a link to that thread to PJ-Comix; we'll see if he finds it worth DUmmie FUnnies material....
"AP's first headline was wrong."
What was it?
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Yeah the NRA pr guys just had all their Sunday ruined today as their pagers went off. It happens more than people think but still stupid. To be honest it might have a good effect if hunter safety is highlighted and maybe the NRA can spin this in a good way as well as other groups. HEck maybe they will talk about the thrills of Bird hunting. Hunting is going down nationwide unfort which means bad things for our gun rights in the long run
"LOL -- I sent a link to that thread to PJ-Comix; we'll see if he finds it worth DUmmie FUnnies material...."
This line on DU will soon be deleted.
OldScratch (1 posts) Sun Feb-12-06 05:00 PM
Response to Original message
172. Cheney's gun...
... has still killed fewer people than Ted Kennedy's car...
Read the report again. The Geezer shot a bird and went off away from the rest of the group looking for it. He never signaled that he was near the VP, or in the immediate area. Shame on him for getting the VP involved in his brain fart.
You know what is so funny was that Howard Dean Referenced former Vice Pres Burr and Cheney together this morning. I wonder if Dean knew and was trying to be cute lol
ROTFLMAO! C of Course.
I'm surprised more people aren't shot while hunting quail and pheasant and the like. If you've ever been, things happen very, very quickly when those birds fly up. And most 78 year olds can't move that fast, LOL! I've been a few times, but I don't really like it; too much work for too little meat in the freezer. Canada Goose, though? We'll have a few in the freezer come fall for Thanksgiving & Christmas dinners. ;)
Then again, maybe deer hunters are just smarter.
I'd rather deer hunt, myself. And I do. But it's been a number of years since I shot anything; these days my friends use me to drive the deer and help butcher because I have a heated machine shed. (They always share the bounty. I have 40 lbs. of burger in the freezer and as much in steaks and roasts right now, too.) Believe me, if I didn't trust them with my LIFE, I would NOT be out there in the general area where they'll be shooting, LOL!
Can you imagine a Presidential candidate doing a photo op over his most recent buck? TR, where are you?
Coming as I do from a long line of outdoorsmen, hunting accidents do happen. That being said, perhaps Mr. Cheney and his hunting buddy are getting a little too old for this and need to take up fishing rods.
BIRDS DISCHARGE ON COURIC: NBC OLYMPIC COVERAGE OFF TO MESSY START
LOL
What was it?
At first AP said Cheney got shot.
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