Police: Intoxicated Man Shoots Mother Duck At Restaurant

WOODBRIDGE, Va.—Maybe he should have ducked out of the bar when he had a chance.

But now that he didn’t, he may need a lawyer to help him duck the charges.

Prince William County police say it all happened June 10 at Tim’s Rivershore Restaurant and Crabhouse.

A man walked into the popular Cherry Hill Road gathering spot on the Potomac River at 2:15 p.m. He appeared intoxicated, Tim’s manager David Blick said, so bartenders refused to serve him.

He also had a “sidearm”—police say it was a .40-caliber handgun—and it wasn’t concealed.

The spurned patron stormed out of the eatery and down to the beach. There, he reached for his gun and fired on a group of ducks known to hang out by Tim’s looking for handouts.

Four to seven shots were fired, Blick said. Customers and workers were horrified.

A mother duck was killed, and the slaying was caught on video, said Prince William police 1st Sgt. Kim Chinn. A woman at the restaurant was videotaping the mother duck and her babies when the man fired the fatal shot.

The man with the gun took off, but customers and employees ran after him and got his car’s license plate number.

An initial police search didn’t turn up the duck killer, but two hours later, police got the call that led to an arrest.

A car had crashed into Powell’s Creek at the end of Corbin Court in southern Woodbridge, not far from Cherry Hill Road. The driver turned out to be the man police were looking for, Chinn said.

David Yount, of 16791 Sweeney Lane in Woodbridge, was charged with driving under the influence, refusal to take a breath or blood test and reckless handling of a firearm, Chinn said.

The 33-year-old could not be charged with animal cruelty because it’s not illegal in Virginia to shoot an animal that can be hunted, she said.

Police, however, did call Virginia’s Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to see if the shooting violated federal wildlife laws. But game wardens determined the duck was a domestic breed and thus not subject to those regulations.

There were also no charges regarding the carrying of a firearm. In Virginia, it’s legal to have a gun in plain view in a restaurant unless the establishment’s owner prohibits it.

Efforts to change state law to allow concealed weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol have thus far been turned back, but the issue came up in the recent Democratic primary for governor.

Eventual party nominee R. Creigh Deeds, a state senator from Bath County, was hammered by primary opponents Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran for voting to allow concealed guns in bars.

Deeds faces GOP candidate Bob McDonnell, a former state attorney general, Nov. 3.

Yount, on the other hand, faces a July 10 court date. He was released on a $500 personal recognizance bond.

The videotape of the duck shooting is being held as evidence, Chinn said.

Blick said the restaurant’s ducks disappeared for a few days after the shooting. But they have started returning - even those now-motherless ducklings.

“I’ve seen them floating down there again,“ he said.

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