A police drone helped convict a man in a stabbing in Silver Spring

Drone video captures stabbing that leads to conviction in Silver Spring attack

A Montgomery County jury this week found 45-year-old Yovan Ali guilty of second-degree assault. Officials said the conviction would not have happened without the help of a police drone. FOX 5’s Josh Rosenthal has the latest details.

SILVER SPRING – AND Montgomery County A jury this week found 45-year-old Yovan Ali guilty of second-degree assault. Officials said the conviction would not have happened without the help of a police drone.

All this is connected with the incident that happened in April last year.

Drone footage showed Ali stabbing the victim at the intersection of Georgia and Sligo avenues in Silver Spring.

The drone then followed Ali as he walked away from the crime scene. Footage shows police arresting him minutes later and helping the victim, who authorities say required surgery but survived.

“This is the first time in the history of Montgomery County that you have convicted a person in front of a jury based almost entirely on drone footage,” explained Montgomery County District Attorney John McCarthy.

The county’s Drone as First Responder program sends drones to active scenes, in this case after McCarthy said someone saw two men arguing and called police.

Asked if there would have been a verdict in the case without the drone footage, McCarthy said, “Absolutely not.”

“We did not call the victim in this case. We built this case based on the drone footage and the swift action of the Montgomery County Police Department.”

Police drones have been a hot topic across the region in recent years, with some raising privacy concerns.

“A lot of people want to have that freedom to not feel like they’re being watched and watched all the time,” one Montgomery County resident told FOX 5 in July.

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However, McCarthy now believes attitudes toward the program have changed.

“Let me tell you,” McCarthy said Friday, “those privacy concerns are over because they see how it works, how it makes them safer.”

On that note, Montgomery County’s drone program is expanding. It currently operates in Silver Spring and Wheaton, and is also expected to open in Gaithersburg and Bethesda soon.