Military Veteran is Arrested for Open Carrying an Empty Shotgun on His Own Property
A military veteran has been arrested and charged with a felony assault with a deadly weapon in Crawford County, Michigan. HE was the one who called the cops to report a trespasser on his land.
When the man’s wife attempted to video tape the arrest the cops ordered her to turn off the camera and attempted to take it.
Thomas Donald was hunting with his son on his own property when he spotted a trespasser. Donald had an unloaded .410 shotgun and his son had a crossbow.
When they found the trespasser, they walked him back to their house and called the Department of Natural Resources. When the cops arrived everything went downhill quick. Thomas Donald held up his open shotgun in one hand and held a shell in his other hand to show that he was not a threat.
But the police did not see it that way and they shortly had a pistol aimed at Donald as they placed him in handcuffs face down on the ground. The video below shows what Heather, Donald’s wife, was able to record before the police forced her to stop recording.
In the video you can hear Heather ask why her husband was being arrested, to which the officer replied, “Because we pulled up and he had a handgun — or excuse me, a rifle,” one of the deputies says, before finally being corrected by Donald. “A shotgun.”
You can hear the officer almost accidentally say Donald was under arrest when he tried to explain why he was in handcuffs on the ground. In the state of Michigan it is completely legal to open carry, especially on your own property. The officers stated this was typical procedure until they established identity.
The police took the woman’s phone and forced her to erase the video of the incident. Later on she cleverly figured out how to get the file back using recovery software and upload it to Youtube
The story doesn’t end there. Soon the police were claiming that Thomas Donald was aiming his shotgun at the trespasser, so he was charged with felonious assault. The couple claims he never pointed his gun at the trespasser. Thomas’s military training taught him never to point a gun at anything he was not wanting to destroy.
The couple is outraged because “this is a man who was openly carrying an unloaded shotgun on his own property, which is legal in Michigan, and it’s even hunting season,” Heather said. “It’s very disturbing, and all of this happened in front of my children. Police are supposed to be the good guys and, at least in this case, they didn’t hold themselves to that standard.”
A Facebook page has been created to help Thomas Donald with his legal defense. If you would like to contribute you can check it out here. His defense costs could be as high as $10,000. Any donation will be greatly appreciated.
– See more at: http://freepatriot.org/2013/09/27/military-veteran-arrested-open-carrying-empty-shotgun-property/#sthash.LFTfiJN5.dpuf