On the evening of September 4, 2023, a dispute in a quiet Ogden, Utah neighborhood turned fatal for 31-year-old Royer Peña, a male resident born in Mexico. The incident began when his neighbor, Brendon Michael Powell, 25, heard a commotion and decided to investigate using his drone. Powell flew the drone near a vehicle on the 700 block of North Liberty Avenue, but it struck a tree and fell.
Peña, a father of five who had just celebrated his birthday, discovered the crashed drone.
Powell, a Marine Corps veteran, armed himself with a handgun before going to retrieve his property. Surveillance footage from Powell's home captured him 'racking the slide of the firearm' before he confronted Peña. An argument erupted between the two men. According to court documents, Peña briefly ran away before turning back toward Powell, holding the drone under one arm with his other hand in his pocket. It was then that Powell fired seven rounds, striking Peña multiple times and killing him at the scene. Wounds were found in his chest, heart, lung, intestines, pelvis, ribs, and multiple limbs.
After the shooting, Powell himself called dispatch to report the incident, telling responding officers he had shot a man over a dispute about the drone. He stated that he 'didn't want to lose his drone because of its value.' Powell was arrested and subsequently charged with one count of murder and six counts of felony discharge of a firearm.
In October of the following year, a jury found Brendon Powell guilty on all seven criminal counts. Before his sentencing, the proceedings were briefly postponed for a mental competency review, but he was ultimately found competent to proceed. A judge sentenced him to 16 years to life in prison for the murder charge and five years to life for each of the six firearm charges, with the sentences to run concurrently. Powell has since filed an appeal of the conviction and sentence.
