Justice Department said <\/a>in a news release.<\/p>\nJennings was having a birthday party with family that day, according to court documents. He drank 2 quarts of Jack Daniel\u2019s at the party, according to the defendant\u2019s lawyer and reporting by City News Service. Jennings later removed a rifle from his gun safe and opened fire inside the home, prompting his family to flee and report the incident to law enforcement, court documents say.<\/p>\n
At the sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge John W. Holcomb, attended by several of his family members, Jennings admitted that his struggles with alcoholism contributed to his actions that day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a serious alcohol abuse problem,\u2019\u2019 Jennings said, according to City News Service. \u201cI let it completely upend my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Orange County Sheriff\u2019s Department responded to the shooting with several deputies and a helicopter that circled Jennings\u2019 home. He fired at the helicopter from the second-story window \u201conly when the helicopter was visible to him,\u201d according to prosecutors. The shooting lasted intermittently for an additional 20 minutes after authorities arrived, the Justice Department said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a serious offense involving violent and disturbing conduct that endangered many lives,\u201d prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum. Jennings \u201crepeatedly shot at an OCSD helicopter from a second-story window with the goal of shooting it down.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a search of Jennings\u2019 home after his arrest, authorities found multiple firearms, rifles and dozens of rounds of ammunition. Bullet casings and additional rounds of unspent ammunition were littered on the floor beneath the window and a couch near where Jennings had fired from, authorities said.<\/p>\n
The Orange County district attorney\u2019s office had originally charged Jennings in connection to the shooting but dismissed the case to allow for the federal case to proceed, according to the Justice Department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Orange County man was sentenced to nine years in prison on Monday over an alcohol-fueled disturbance during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[144020,163,165,164,6577,44658,1431,783,1073,144021,144018,4515,2901,144022,71742,144019,2637,135],"class_list":["post-352536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-additional-round","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-authority","tag-bullet","tag-family","tag-helicopter","tag-home","tag-jack-daniel","tag-jennings","tag-justice-department","tag-prison","tag-quart","tag-rifle","tag-second-story-window","tag-sheriff","tag-shooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}