By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent
It wasn’t exactly an unidentified object that flew over the prison that houses Bill Cosby this week.
Not, according to Cosby’s spokesman Andrew Wyatt, who noted the timing of the drone that was discovered above the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institute Phoenix in Collegeville, Penn.
Wyatt told NNPA Newswire that Cosby was walking across the yard for his daily exercise and prison officials were also escorting the blind comedian to his new quarters, in a veteran’s wing of the new prison, when the drone was spotted.
“Someone had to have been tipped off that Mr. Cosby would be out there and was being moved,” Wyatt said, noting that he plans to visit Cosby later this week because the prison was shut down after the incident and Camille Cosby wasn’t able to hear from her husband during that time.
Wyatt said he believes American Media Inc.’s premiere publication, The National Enquirer, was behind the drone.
“It’s my opinion that it was The National Enquirer,” Wyatt said. “I believe they’ve done it before when he was at home and I had to complain because it’s illegal to fly drones in Pennsylvania near power lines,” he said.
“They were trying to get film of Mr. Cosby,” Wyatt continued.
Cosby is serving a three- to ten-year prison sentence after being convicted last year of aggravated indecent assault in a controversial trial that seemingly lacked any evidence and a judge who made what many legal experts said were questionable-at-best rulings against him.
Cosby has maintained his innocence and is currently appealing both his conviction and sentencing.
Dylan Howard, American Media Inc.’s Chief Content Officer, didn’t return messages left for him Tuesday.
Department of Corrections officials told USA Today the department does not discuss security matters but acknowledged the agency has installed drone detection systems as part of its enhanced security measures.
