The defendant has agreed to pay more than $65,000 in restitution and faces up to a year in federal prison, prosecutors said.

A Southern California man admitted to operating a drone that collided with a firefighting airplane during the Palisades Fire as the blaze was charring tens of thousands of acres earlier this month, officials said Friday.

A Culver City man has agreed to plead guilty to crashing a drone into a Super Scooper aircraft making water drops over the deadly Palisades Fire, grounding the powerful firefighting aircraft early into the battle against the growing wildfire.

As part of the plea agreement, Akemann agreed to pay full restitution to the Government of Quebec, which supplied the plane, and an aircraft repair company that repaired the plane. It cost at least $65,169 to repair the plane, prosecutors said.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The pilot of a drone that crashed into a firefighting plane, leaving a gaping hole and grounding the aircraft during the deadly Palisades Fire in Los Angeles, has agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of unsafely operating a drone, federal authorities said Friday.

Peter Tripp Akeman, 56, admitted to launching a private drone from a rooftop on Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade Jan. 9 that hit an aircraft fighting the inferno in the sky