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.
Imagine being the guy that shot Cheney?
Particularly if the Secret Service was around to return fire.
ahhh....ahhhh..!
HEHE!!
I was just thinking if this was John Fing Kerry they would be putting this off on the SS officer working with him.
We have a motorcycle traffic cop in a neighboring burb who likes to sit in front of City Hall and then, when he sees someone coming down the main drag, just jump out in front of them on foot, causing them to slam on the brakes.
He did it to me one time when I was carrying some very fragile antique dolls on my passenger seat - $3000 worth. He jumped out, I slammed on brakes, dolls went flying and crashed onto the floorboard, destroyed.
I was going 25 mph at the time! He jumped out that fast. So, he came up to my window and said "What if I had been a child from that school across the street?"
I pointed to my broken treasures and said, "a little kid couldn't have helped doing that. YOU did this on purpose!"
He wrote me a ticket for speeding 25 in a 20mph school zone, even though school was not in session at the time. Kangaroo court.
Sometimes I just *wish* he would get accidentally "grazed" by one of the folks he ambushes like he did me and has done to many others.
that may be a tad extreme, by my husband says they will be calling for senate hearings soon.
I hope you are being sarcastic.
Nope, she's serious as a heart attack!
Scary, isn't it. And we wonder why the lefties have such an easy time of it when they want to increasingly infringe the RKBA. All they have to do is look for some "hunter" who gets on a tear about how it's YOUR fault if s/he shoots you, and, well, there ya go. And they won't have to look far to find someone like that, as this thread demonstrates.
For the record, I happen to live in a very rural area. How rural? Rural enough that for me, "deer season" means walking about fifty yards to my barn, sitting by the hay loft and looking out across the field, toward my pond.
And, for the record, it just so happens that last year, while my wife was raking leaves in our front yard, a bullet came whistling in, and hit either the ground or a tree -- within a few feet of her -- with a loud -thunk-.
And guess what?
The police INVESTIGATED it. They did NOT tell her it was her own fault for deciding to live in a rural area, deciding to rake leaves in her front yard, yada yada yada. They said it was IRRESPONSIBLE use of a firearm (the bullet came from over a hill -- some MORON had aimed UP, with NO backstop, and guess what? There's this thing called "ballistics"...)
Unfortunately they did NOT apprehend the SLOB "hunter" who almost killed my wife. But if they had, they surely would have prosecuted him.
Where are you getting this legal advice that you are pumping up our keesters like sunshine? You are coming off like "Bride of Deliverance". I mean, really. You need to stop peddling this BS!
BUT, you have to remember. Clinton, Gore, Kerry and the rest don't use real bullets. They mostly point and say "bang-bang" and expect the bad guy to die. (Well, other than Hillary and the Arkanside problems.) Still, the more public Democrats are not going to use real bullets.
LOL!
It doesn't look like he has to "try", does it.
That's the essence of "RHIP", after all.
When the King steps on your toe, he doesn't have to say "I'm sorry." Period.
It really captures the essence of Mr. Pancake Makeup, Lipstick, and Power-Lisp (I think it was the second debate when he applied that strategy, and the image is seared, seared into my memory. :)
"Unfortunately, he would be labeled a RINO by quite a few FReepers were he alive today."
Well, in Teddy's case, it would be "RHINO." ;)
Only IF you allow this to become an issue.
My ex "peppered" the tail of my beautiful little Brittany spaniel on purpose once when I was not along on the quail hunt. I was furious and looked into how to go about legally peppering HIS tail.
She wasn't really hurt, but according to him, that's how they train the dogs not to get in the line of fire. If they get peppered once, they'll stay out of the way. Poor little thing was only 6-7 months old and was a very well trained bird dog camp graduate, already.
Anyway, it never happened again, but I always wondered if that was why she was such an incredibly fast bolter and runner, so much so that everyone always commented on it!
lovuian (1000+ posts) Sun Feb-12-06 06:23 PM Original message Heres a question was Dick drinking when he shot his buddy cause shooting while intoxicated is a no no!!! thats a ususal for hunters a bit of the drink to keep them warm... was he given a breathlizer test???
Getting shot?
Getting dusted with a little fine shot, yes.
I would guess half the quail hunters I know have either hit someone or been hit.
So9
Must watch TV tomorrow night..Jon Stewart, Leno, and Letterman..
I'm stealing that... tears are rolling down my face...
Well, the pellets didn't hurt the lawyer so much. Maybe Cheney shouldn't have field dressed him. That had to hurt.
Nah, this is NOT an example of rainforest math, it's "Lobal Warning" math...
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