CORPUS CHRISTI (USA), Feb 17: Local police cleared US Vice-President Dick Cheney of any wrongdoing in his weekend hunting mishap and closed the case on Thursday, saying no charges would be filed.
Kenedy County Sheriff Ramon Salinas said an investigation had determined Mr Cheney shot Texas lawyer Harry Whittington by accident. Hence no legal action was needed.
“No charges will be filed against anybody, and that’s it,” Mr Salinas told reporters in brief comments outside his office in the town of Sarita, south of Corpus Christi.
President George Bush, in his first public comments on the shooting, said on Thursday he was satisfied with the explanation Mr Cheney gave about the incident.
“I thought the vice-president handled the issue just fine. And I thought his explanation yesterday was a powerful explanation,” Mr Bush said in Washington.
Mr Cheney sprayed Mr Whittington, 78, with birdshot on Saturday when he whirled around to shoot a flying quail while hunting on a southern Texas ranch.
A final report showed that San Miguel did not start his investigation until a day after the shooting and his questioning of Mr Whittington was cut off by a hospital nurse who said he needed to rest.
The mishap blew up into a political furore as Mr Cheney did not disclose it until nearly a day later when he let ranch owner Katharine Armstrong call it into the Corpus Christi Caller-Times on Sunday. The press complained the White House had tried to hide the incident and Democrats charged it showed the secretiveness of the Bush administration.
Mr Cheney finally spoke about it on Wednesday in an interview with Fox News Channel in which he detailed the shooting and described it as ‘one of the worst days of my life’. He rejected criticism he waited too long to make it public.
Democrats who say the shooting was an example of White House secrecy ‘are making the wrong conclusion about a tragic Accident’, Mr Bush said. He added: “Now our concerns are directed toward the recovery of our friend.”—Reuters
