A seven-year-old boy is clinging to his life after a falling drone at Lake Eola Park hit him during the city’s holiday Drone show Saturday night.
Channel 9 talked to a 10-year Chief Drone Pilot and owner of Atmosphere Drones, Paul Charbonnet, on the tragedy and the inner workings of creating a drone show and how they operate.
“It gets a little more complicated with what they’re doing because they have to be able to operate hundreds of drones at once. Now, no one is technically controlling the drone but there is a controller. Moving the drone around is all automated and run by computers,” said Charbonnet.
Charbonnet referred to the dozens of drones operated by Texas-based company Sky Element Drones. The company operated the Saturday show for the second year.
The 15-minute show began without a hitch, each drone moving with surgical precision. But perfection can unravel in seconds.
A few minutes in, a section of the formation began to falter. According to the FAA, several drones collided and moved off-course and dropped into the crowd, hitting a seven-year-old boy.
The child’s mother told Channel 9 Sunday. His sister saw him on the ground bleeding, and he was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery.
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