Jeremy Sumpter, Texas man, sentenced for pointing laser at police helicopter in Florida

Jeremy Wayne Sumpter of Garland, Texas, has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison for aiming a laser pointer at a police helicopter in Tampa, Florida.

Sumpter, 31, faced up to five years behind bars and a $250,000 fine for violating a provision of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 that forbids pointing laser beams at planes and other aircraft. He had entered a guilty plea to the felony back in March and was formally sentenced on Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Kovachevich.

The prison sentence handed out by the Justice Department is the second such to be announced in just as many months. In September, Barry Lee Bowser received a 21-month sentence for aiming a laser at a law enforcement aircraft in California. 

More than 17,000 incidents occurred in the U.S. between 2005 and 2013, according to FBI statistics, but those culminated in only 134 arrests and 80 convictions as of last year, Ars Technica reported at the time.

Sumpter’s ordeal began to unfold on Feb. 14, 2014, when the crewmembers onboard a Bell 407 helicopter operated by the Tampa Police Department said they experienced three or four flashes of bright green light.

Sumpter was spotted immediately on the ground and was then seen running into his home; later, he admitted to investigators that he had been using the laser pointer and had attempted to destroy it due to fear of getting in trouble.

“Were you the one in the helicopter?” Sumpter asked when a pilot joined investigators during the interview process, according to the FBI. He was indicted by a grand jury four months later.

The FBI had announced a week before the crime occurred that the Justice Department would offer a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of individuals caught violating the FAA provision in certain jurisdictions. Pilots say laser beams can be amplified by cockpit windows and can cause temporary blindness while in the air.

Earlier this month, officials in Marion County, Florida, arrested a man who is accused of having briefly blinded the pilot of a Sheriff’s Office chopper with the laser from a hair-growth comb.