(Credit: Heather Donald, YouTube)

A military veteran in Crawford County, Michigan has been arrested and charged with a felony assault with a deadly weapon even after HE was the one who called the cops in the first place when he found a man trespassing on his property.

When the man’s wife tried to video tape what was happening the cops told her to turn off the camera and tried to take it.  (You can see the video below… only because the wife figured out how to restore the “deleted” file)

The Blaze has reported that Thomas Donald was out hunting with his son on his own land when they came across the trespasser.  Donald had an unloaded .410 shotgun while his son was using a crossbow.

When they came across the trespasser on a dirt bike, they escorted him back to the house and called the Department of Natural Resources.  But when the police showed up everything went downhill fast.  According to Heather Donald when the cops showed up Thomas Donald held up his open shotgun in one hand and held a shell in his other hand to show that he was not a threat.

But the police did not get the hint and they soon had a pistol pointed at Donald as they put him in handcuffs and on the ground.  The following video shows what Heather was able to record before the police forced her to turn off the cell phone camera. SEE VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kjIAPZMGcdI

In the video you can hear Heather asking why her husband was being arrested, to which the officer replied,

“Because we pulled up and he had a handgun — or excuse me, a rifle,” one of the deputies says, before being corrected by Donald. “A shotgun.”

You can also hear the officer almost say Donald was under arrest at that point trying to explain why he was in handcuffs.  It should be noted that in the state of Michigan it IS legal to open carry, especially on your own property.  The officers explained this was typical procedure because at this point they didn’t know who was who.

The cops then reportedly took the woman’s phone and forced her to delete the video she had just taken.  But later on she figured out how to use recovery software to get the file back and upload it to Youtube.

It would be bad enough if the story ended there.  But soon the cops were saying that Thomas Donald was pointing his shotgun at the trespasser and he was charged with felonious assault, even though the couple says he  never pointed his gun at the trespasser and alluded to Thomas’s military training which taught him never to point a gun at anything he was not wanting to destroy.

The trespasser said he never saw any “no trespassing” signs, but later Heather Donald shot more video of the signs clearly visible on the trail the trespasser entered to get onto the Donald’s property.

The couple is outraged because “this is a man who was openly carrying an unloaded shotgun on his own property, which is legal in Michigan, and it’s even hunting season,” Heather told TheBlaze.

“It’s very disturbing,” Heather said, “and all of this happened in front of my children. Police are supposed to be the good guys and, at least in this case, they didn’t hold themselves to that standard.”

Update: A Facebook page has been setup to help Thomas Donald with his legal defense in this case.  If you could like to contribute or learn more you can check it out here.  His defense costs could be as much as $10,000 so any donation will be appreciated.