Drone Elephant Safaris Lead To Nevada Predator Bust
Tanzanian elephant killed by armchair hunters half a world away. |
By Julia E. Hoover for CPW News Services
Authorities raided the DSS Inc., Drone Safari Services,
Inc., offices near Indian Springs, Nevada on Monday charging Simon Megs, a
military drone pilot, with selling arm chair safaris to two Omaha, Nebraska
business men.
Roger Bekins and Sam Pakins paid $12,000 each for the
opportunity to remotely hunt an elephant in the wilds of Tanzania using a
special version of a Predator Drone that was apparently reported as downed by a
RPG in Afghanistan.
“We believe that the drone had been flown by Megs and others
from Afghanistan to a remote airport in Tanzania where it was put into an
underground, back channel hunting service created by Megs and several
unidentified financial backers,” said Umbazzi Boswanni, Deputy Warden of the
Tanzanian Game Preservation Commission.
“Wire taps at the offices of DSS where Bekins and Pakins
popped a cork on a bottle of champagne as they downed glass after glass of Dom
Perignon while smoking embargoed Cuban
cigars and eating Russian caviar while sitting in matching red leather wing back chairs in
front of a huge HD TV, tells it all," said Boswanni.“They’re not drones. They’re sky crooners. They’re music to my ears,” said Megs in the police recordings as Bekins and Pakins congratulated each other for their excellent technique in pushing their matching red push button triggers at about the same time. Twin 50 cal. machine guns left the bull elephant in a bloody heap near where he had stood guard over a clueless pack of playful pachyderms according to the Megs recordings.
Megs, who recently joined other drone pilots to allay the fears of U.S. citizens concerned that the robotic aerial weapons might be turned on them, said “I’m am completely innocent of any wrongdoing. I love elephants. Elephants are my friends. Plus I’m a Republican. I’d never hurt the symbol of my political party.”
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