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Vice President Cheney

WASHINGTON Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday. The accident happened Saturday afternoon but was not reported to the press for almost 24 hours.

Harry Whittington, 78, was "alert and doing fine" after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong.

The news was reported nationally Sunday afternoon, with no explanation of why there was a delay. The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. Larger papers in Dallas and Austin, caught unawares, were still running only AP accounts early Sunday evening, although they had pictures of the victim.

The Corpus Christi paper said the accident happened at 5:30 p.m. Saturday. It described Whittington as an Austin, Texas, attorney.

It was Armstrong's decision to alert the news media, The Washington Post reported late Sunday. "Cheney's office made no public announcement, deciding to defer to Armstrong because the incident had taken place on her property," the Post noted. "Armstrong called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and when a reporter from the paper called the White House, the vice president's office confirmed the account."

Armstrong said Whittington was mostly injured on his right side, with the pellets hitting his cheek, neck and chest, and was taken to the hospital by ambulance.

Whittington was in stable condition Sunday, said Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System.

Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said the vice president was with Whittington, a lawyer from Austin, Texas, and his wife at the hospital on Sunday afternoon. He later flew back to Washington, D.C.

"It was accidental, a hunting accident," Sheriff Ramon Salinas III of Kenedy County in Sarita, Tex., told The New York Times, adding that the Secret Service notified him Saturday of the episode. "They did what they had to according to law."

Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shot at a covey of quail late afternoon on Saturday.

Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the 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 in an interview.

"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 Whittington was bleeding but not very seriously injured, and Cheney was very apologetic.

The Austin Statesman-Review has described Whittington as a wealthy friend of President Bush and his father. He is presently involved in an eminent domain battle, leading the Austin daily to open a story last month: "Little Guys who take on the government rarely win, unless the Little Guy is a guy like Harry Whittington.

"Whittington, an Austin lawyer, is very rich, very stubborn and very patient -- qualities that come in handy if, like him, you're waging a long legal battle against the city."

He also is commissioner of the state's Funeral Service Commission. In 1999, George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, named Whittington to head the Commission, which licenses and regulates funeral directors and embalmers in the state. "When he was named," The New York Times revealed late Sunday, "a former executive director of the commission, Eliza May, was suing the state, saying that she had been fired because she investigated a funeral home chain that was owned by a friend of Mr. Bush.

"The suit was settled in 2001, but the details were not disclosed."

Describing the shooting accident, Armstrong said, "It broke the skin. It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that." 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 hunted together.

"This is something that happens from time to time. You now, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong.