Monday, March 19, 2012

Police drone crashed during flight test - police reveal.


A prototype military test drone crashed into a SWAT team’s armored vehicle last fall during a test flight, according to an official at Spring-based Vanguard Defense Industries, which developed the drone.

The drone crashed during a test flight at Vanguard’s flight test and training facility in Conroe in September 2011 after the operator “observed a vibration in the aircraft and elected to conduct an emergency landing,” said Vanguard CEO Michael Buscher.

The operator was trying to the land the drone when its rotors clipped a Montgomery County Sheriff’s SWAT vehicle. Sheriff’s officials were on hand photograph the test drone.

The SWAT vehicle sustained minor damage, while damage to the drone was confined to the rotors, Buscher said.

MCSO recently used federal homeland security grant money to purchase a $300,000 police drone from Vanguard, and is moving forward with its separate program. The crash will not impact the Montgomery County SO’s drone program, a sheriff’s spokesman said.

“They (Vanguard) are continuing to develop their particular aircraft, and they’re experimenting, I assume, with various types of engines,” said Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel. “It (drone) was not ours. Ours has been flying perfectly, and I’m not concerned in the least.”

The test drone was powered by a turbine engine designed for military use only, while Montgomery County’s Shadow Hawk drone is piston-driven, Buscher said. Both drones are miniature helicopters.

Emergency landings during test flights are part of the landscape of the aerospace industry, Buscher said.

“It’s (crash) certainly not anything significant,” he said. “We do prototype testing regularly, and this was advanced testing, lower-level flights. This happens in the aerospace industry.

“The beautify of having something unmanned is you’re not putting any humans in harm’s way,” Buscher said.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Postal worker finds 2 children living in abandoned bus near Splendora


WASHINGTON POST:

SPLENDORA, Texas — Two children who were found living in a stench-filled abandoned school bus near Houston, its windows blocked and the lot around it covered in trash, are in the custody of Texas child welfare workers, officials said Thursday.

A postal worker discovered the children, ages 11 and 5, at the bus in Splendora about 10 a.m. Wednesday, officials said. Their parents are believed to be in prison for embezzling money from Hurricane Ike victims in 2008. The children are not enrolled at local schools.

The bus appeared to have electricity, an air conditioning unit installed in one window and bunk beds inside for the children. But several neighbors told the Houston Chronicle that the children typically looked unkempt and could often be spotted running around at night.

“They always had dirty clothes on (and) no shoes, even in the winter,” said nearby resident Gayla Payne, who said the 11-year-old girl told her daughter that she bathes twice a week.

Investigators told KTRK-TV that the children have been living in the bus since the beginning of the year.

The children told Texas Child Protective Services workers that they were home-schooled. A woman on the property — believed to be the children’s great-aunt — told CPS she worked 12-hour shifts Monday through Friday but that she stayed with the children at night.

“The aunt said that she does provide meals for them during the day,” Montgomery County Constable Rowdy Hayden told KTRK-TV. “Looking around the (the bus), we didn’t see a lot of food readily available. One of the neighbors had told us earlier that from time to time she will bring food over for the children.”

The children are in foster care pending an investigation by Child Protective Services, spokeswoman Gwen Carter said. CPS workers will appear in court Thursday to ask a judge for emergency custody of the children, she said.

Splendora is 35 miles northeast of Houston.

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