Operating drone at lava lake gets man Tasered by ranger

A man who had been flying a drone over a lake of lava at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was hit with a Taser by a park ranger and then arrested in front of several hundred people.

Travis Ray Sanders brought his family to the park Saturday evening to re­cord video of the lava with his drone and didn’t realize the man yelling at him to bring it down was a ranger, he told Hawaii News Now. Flying an unmanned aircraft at a national park is prohibited.

"He sounded very angry, confrontational — like he wanted to fight — and I didn’t really want to stick around for it so I just told him, ‘I don’t have ID and I’m leaving,’" San­ders told the Hono­lulu news station.

The ranger asked San­ders three times to bring the drone down, and San­ders eventually brought it down, park spokes­woman Jessica Ferracane said Tuesday.

"The ranger identified himself and approached the individual, who refused to identify himself," Ferracane said.

Because Sanders fled and was near the edge of the caldera rim — where there’s a 500-foot drop — the ranger deployed a Taser, she said.

Crowds have been flocking to an overlook area at the park to watch a steadily rising lava lake at the summit of Kilauea Volcano.

Another visitor to the park, Randy Horne, was setting up his camera and tripod at the overlook when he heard a commotion. He heard someone yell stop, and when he turned around he saw the ranger pull out a stun gun. He saw the weapon’s "sparkly, glowing blue" wires attached to a man on the ground.

"I really didn’t see there was any severe threat going on," Horne, of Hono­kaa, Hawaii, said. "In my opinion, I thought it was a severe overreaction."

Horne watched as San­ders was handcuffed, checked by paramedics and then put into a police car.

Sanders, 35, of Pahoa, Hawaii, was arrested and cited with interfering with agency functions and operating an aircraft on undesignated land. He was taken to a Hawaii County police cellblock, where he spent the night, He was released in the morning on $500 bail, Ferracane said. He has a July 22 court date.

"He was described as being very unpredictable, belligerent," Ferracane said of San­ders. "The ranger felt he needed to be stopped for the safety of himself and others."