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Chinese national arrested for flying drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base

Bill Oxford
/
Unsplash

Los Angeles area resident was arrested as he was boarding a flight from San Francisco to China.

A Southern California man who is also a Chinese citizen was arrested on a federal criminal charge which claimed he flew a drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Prosecutors say the incident occurred November 30. A base security system detected an unauthorized drone flying over base airspace. Security personnel went to a public park next to the base, where they found Yinpiao Zhou.

They got a federal search warrant and seized the drone. They say it contained several photos of the base.

Zhou was arrested Monday at San Francisco International Airport as he was boarding a flight to China. The 39-year-old Brentwood man has legal status as a permanent U.S. resident. He was arrested on federal charges of violating national defense airspace and for failure to register an aircraft.

Lance Orozco has been News Director of KCLU since 2001, providing award-winning coverage of some of the biggest news events in the region, including the Thomas and Woolsey brush fires, the deadly Montecito debris flow, the Borderline Bar and Grill attack, and Ronald Reagan's funeral.