A trans National Guard pilot was falsely accused of flying the helicopter in the fatal plane collision
CNN
A trans member of the National Guard is speaking out after a wave of claims on social media falsely pointed to her as the pilot of the Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet in Washington, Wednesday, killing 67 people.
A trans member of the National Guard is speaking out after a wave of claims on social media falsely pointed to her as the pilot of the Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet in Washington, Wednesday, killing 67 people. Jo Ellis, a UH60 Black Hawk helicopter pilot for the Virginia Army National Guard, posted on Facebook Friday to dispel the rumors that had echoed President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated blaming of diversity initiatives for the fatal accident. “Some craziness has happened on the internet and I’m being named as one of the pilots of the DC crash,” Ellis wrote. “It’s insulting to the victims and families of those lost and they deserve better than this BS from the bots and trolls of the internet.” In her Facebook post, Ellis shared a screenshot of two X posts that linked her being trans to the catastrophic crash, with one user saying they “wouldn’t be surprised” if “the pilot was trans” in response to another post that claimed Ellis “has been making radicalized anti-Trump statements on socials. The latter account has since deleted the post and published an apology. A separate account, which has a blue checkmark and 13,600 followers, shared a now-deleted post directly attacking Ellis and spreading the bogus conspiracy theory. While the account has likewise issued a correction, the post still raked in at least 195,000 views and was reshared almost 1,000 times before being deleted. At the time of both corrections, “Jo Ellis” was the No. 3 trending topic on X, with 19,400 posts. And, despite Ellis’ correction — which she further addressed in a follow-up Facebook video, captioned “proof of life” — far-right accounts on X have continued to spread misinformation and hate speech.
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