Bankie Arrested After Allegedly Shooting At Boaters, DCSO Drone

Talk about an automatic Jackass of the Month candidate.

A bank angler camping at Crane Prairie Reservoir, a popular trout and bass fishery southwest of Bend, yesterday afternoon allegedly shot at three fishermen in a boat and then at a Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office drone before he was arrested and charged with three felonies that could lead to a lifelong ban on owning guns if convicted.

According to a press release from the sheriff and local news reports, the three boaters were fishing near shore when some campers near the Deschutes National Forest’s Rock Creek Campground started “screaming” that they were going to run over their lines in the water.

The boaters reportedly couldn’t see any lines, but one of the bank anglers then shot a shotgun in their “general vicinity,” leaving them “fearing for their lives.” They sped to the south end of Crane Prairie and called 911. None were reportedly injured.

Responding sheriff’s deputies sent up a drone to get a better visual on the camp from where the shot had come and who was camped there, and while it was flying it was shot at twice.

With help from an armored rescue vehicle and a SWAT team, the suspect – identified in the Bend Bulletin as Nicholas Clifford Ervin Fetters, 39, of Bend – was eventually taken into custody.

Officers reportedly found a number of guns in the camp and they seized the shotgun Fetters fired. He was charged with “unlawful use of a weapon, recklessly endangering a person, menacing and disorderly conduct,” according to the Bulletin, which based its story off of court papers filed in Deschutes County Circuit Court today.

If convicted, Fetters could lose his right to own guns.

Man, as a bank angler, it can be really aggravating when boat anglers decide to troll in close to shore or anchor up in a good spot within casting distance of the riprap or whatever I’m standing on, especially when they have the whole lake or river to work with and I’m stuck in one place or stretch.

But it’s extraordinarily ridiculous, not to mention dangerous and idiotic, to get a wild hair and start shooting.

Warning the boaters there were lines in the area was the right thing to do; firing a warning shot was the dumb thing to do, and somehow it got even dumber when shots were fired at the sheriff’s drone.

Pray tell, was alcohol involved? Anything else?