Abrignac wrote:IIRC, Chaney was duck hunting...
Exerpted from Wikipedia:"The ****** Cheney hunting incident occurred ... when then U.S. Vice President ****** Cheney shot Harry Whittington... while participating in a
quail hunt. ...
Both Cheney and Whittington call the incident an accident.
Early reports indicated that Cheney and Whittington were friends and that the injuries were minor. Whittington has since told ... that he and Cheney were not close friends but acquaintances and has not said if Cheney apologized....
Harry Whittington said, "Accidents do and will happen – and that’s what happened". ...
Secret Service agents and medical aides, who were traveling with Cheney, came to Whittington's assistance and treated his birdshot wounds to his right cheek, neck, and chest. An ambulance standing nearby for the Vice President took Whittington to nearby Kingsville before he was flown by helicopter to Corpus Christi Memorial Hospital in Corpus Christi. ...
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department... issued an incident report. According to the report, the shooter (Cheney) "was swinging on game," that is to say, turning to track it with his gun. The summary of the incident given was: Whittington downed a bird and went to retrieve it. While he was out of the hunting line, another covey was flushed and Cheney swung on a bird and fired, striking Whittington in the face, neck and chest....
Whittington was injured in the face, neck, and upper torso. Whittington was reported to be in stable condition at Corpus Christi Memorial Hospital and had been moved from intensive care to a "step-down unit"...
Doctors had decided to leave up to 200 pieces of birdshot pellets lodged in his body rather than try to remove them....
[While still hospitalized,] Whittington suffered a minor heart attack and atrial fibrillation due to the shot pellets lodged in or near his heart. Additionally he experienced a collapsed lung. He was immediately moved back to the intensive care unit.... Whittingon underwent a cardiac catheterization test to detect blocked or leaky arteries. From the test, doctors found a single lead pellet. (That's all. Just one teeny-tiny little pellet... It was so very minor LMAO!!!)
Whittington was subsequently discharged from the hospital. ...At a press conference, he said:
"My family and I are deeply sorry for everything Vice President Cheney and his family have had to deal with. We hope that he will continue to come to Texas and seek the relaxation that he deserves." ....:-&
The incident hurt Cheney's popularity standing in the pollsAccording to polls on February 27, 2006, two weeks after the accident,
****** Cheney's approval rating had dropped 5 percentage points to 18%. (Now we know why voters hated Cheney.)"