Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured 78-year-old Austin lawyer Harry Whittington while they were quail hunting together in South Texas on Saturday.

78-year-old Austin lawyer Harry Whittington (Andrew Price/AMERICAN-STATESMAN)

The Vice President sprayed Whittington with shotgun pellets at the Armstrong Ranch in Kenedy County; Whittington was hit on his right side on his cheek, neck and chest.

Whittington was taken by ambulance to the Christus Spohn Health System in Corpus Christi, where he was in stable condition Sunday, said spokeswoman Yvonne Wheeler.

Whittington, a former member of the state prison board and public finance authority board, serves on the Texas Funeral Services Commission and Texas Office of Patient Protection.

For the last six years, Whittington has been involved in a legal battle with the city of Austin. The city condemned a downtown block Whittington's family owned in order to build a $10.5 million parking garage. Last month, the Texas Supreme Court denied the city's request to hear an appeal, reaffirming a prior ruling in Whittington's favor.

The Whittington family, which has owned the block on Red River between Fourth and Fifth streets since 1980, wanted to develop the lot into apartments or shops.

Armstrong Ranch owner Katharine Armstrong, who was with Cheney and Whittington when the incident happened at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, said Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and a third hunter walked to another spot and found a second covey.

Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong told the Associated Press.

"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

She said emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington, holding his face and cleaning up the blood.

"Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been," she said. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."

Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the ranch to hunt about once a year. She said Whittington is a regular, too, but she thought it was the first time the two men had hunted together.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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