ORLANDO, Fla. — The pilot’s voice confirmed his suspicion.

What You Need To Know

  • Volusia Sheriff's Air One helicopter hit by lasers 2 days in a row

  • Sheriff's spokesman says it's unusual but not thought to be connected

  • Officials underscore that it's a felony in Florida to point laser at aircraft

“Yeah, we’re getting hit by a laser, multiple times,” he says in a video on the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office website.

The department said Thursday that one of its helicopters got intentionally hit with a laser Wednesday night for a second straight day — incidents that resulted in arrests in Volusia and Flagler counties.

In Florida, it’s a third-degree felony to knowingly and willfully shine the beam of a laser on an aircraft, vessel, or motor vehicle. Law enforcement officials emphasize that laser beams can temporarily blind pilots or drivers, resulting in crashes and injuries or deaths.

The department says it doesn’t think this week’s incidents are connected.

But it thinks they’re odd.

“Very odd,” said Andrew Gant, a spokesman for the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office. “It’s not something thankfully that we see extremely regularly. One time is too many. Two in one week is way too many. That’s why we’re trying to push the message that we’re not going to tolerate it.”

The Sheriff’s Office said it arrested an Edgewater man early Tuesday after he pointed a laser at the department’s Air One helicopter, one of three helicopters in its fleet. The man did so from a boat in the Intracoastal Waterway as the helicopter responded to a burglary call, causing the pilot to temporarily lose sight, the department said.

Ryan Hutton, 29, said he pointed a laser at the helicopter “thinking it was a drone,” the department said in a news release.

Then, around 11 p.m. Wednesday, an Air One helicopter got hit with a laser from a home in Palm Coast as the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office assisted the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office in a search for a man who fled a deputy’s traffic stop, the Flagler Sheriff’s Office said.

In the video on the Volusia Sheriff’s Office website, the pilot tells a dispatcher that the laser prompted him to divert his search for the man who fled to the person who pointed the laser.

“Flagler, we’re getting hit by the laser again,” the Volusia Sheriffs pilot says. “You have a unit en route to that?”

The video shows the pilot directing law enforcement officers to both men, both of whom authorities arrested. Gregory Marr, 60, was charged with pointing a laser at a driver or pilot, the Flagler Sheriff’s Office said.

Marr said he thought the helicopter was the same as the one that had been flying at low altitudes near his neighborhood over the previous few days, according to a Sheriff's report.

“People do stupid things,” Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly said Thursday. “I think they get annoyed because of the noise of the helicopter. It was at night, and so they make these stupid decisions without realizing the potential serious consequences — that they could have crashed a $4 million helicopter, killed the pilot, the copilot and people on the ground because they got annoyed. And they probably didn’t realize that it was a felony to do that.

“Well, he learned the hard way.”