A man has been sentenced to two months in prison for using a drone to deliver 195 grams of cannabis to an inmate at a Mississippi jail in late 2021.
Fifty-year-old Mark Anderson pleaded guilty to using the unmanned aerial vehicle to drop a marijuana package to his incarcerated buddy on Sept. 26. He must have thought it was a good idea at the time.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office says he will be placed on supervised release for three years after serving his brief stint in the slammer for the relatively minor offence. He sent the drone over the fence at the Federal Correctional Complex in Yazoo City.
Drone delivery has become increasingly popular in the United States. Faster deliveries and reduced reliance on gas-powered vehicles are favourable aspects of this shipping method.
Certain major companies like Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) and United Parcel Service Inc (NYSE: UPC) have obtained approval from the Federal Aviation Administration for using UAVs to transport goods to customers.
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Not the first time this has happened in the U.S.
In 2019, somebody flew a drone above an Ohio prison and dropped a small shipment of marijuana and a cell phone.
Footage shows an inmate playing cornhole in the jail’s courtyard as a dark package falls from the sky.
The incident occurred at the Cuyahoga County Jail in the state’s city of Euclid.
A few years earlier in 2015 a fight broke out at another Ohio prison when a UAV dropped a parcel of heroin, weed and tobacco into the yard. Prison guards had to break out the pepper spray to put an end to the nine-man brawl.
Delivering goods into prisons with drones has been gaining popularity elsewhere too.
In Canada last month, a C$405,000-dollar package of meth, cannabis and MDMA discovered in a New Brunswick jail was determined to have been dropped by a drone.
And in England and Wales, 1,296 drone incidents were reported at prisons during a 10-month period ending last October.
A drone was caught on camera dropping cannabis and a cell phone into this Ohio jail pic.twitter.com/X4dizdY9mU
— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) September 26, 2019
rowan@mugglehead.com
