A transgender Black Hawk pilot was mistakenly identified as one of the three U.S. Army personnel aboard the helicopter that crashed into a plane in Washington, D.C. Jo Ellis, 34, was wrongly named as the female co-pilot of the ill-fated aircraft on Thursday. However, there is no truth in the claim.
On Friday, it was confirmed that the co-pilot of the U.S. Army Black Hawk Sikorsky UH-60 was a female service member on a training mission. Her identity has not yet been revealed but she had over 500 hours of flying experience. The other two personnel on board were Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Eaves and Ryan O’Hara, both from Georgia.
False Claim
Daily Mail contacted Ellis on Friday and she was visibly shaken but and confirmed that she was alive. Ellis added: “I am very much alive.” Ellis said that the false rumors had left her “shocked,” while the Pentagon was reportedly preparing a statement to refute the misinformation circulating online.
Having previously worked for CNN star Michael Smerconish, Ellis condemned the false claims as “disrespectful to the families” of the 67 victims who lost their lives in Wednesday night’s tragedy, the Daily Mail reported.
In a blog post, Ellis shared that she was homeschooled for most of her childhood and had struggled with gender dysphoria since the age of five.
Ellis enlisted in the military in 2009 as a 15G helicopter mechanic with the Virginia National Guard and was sent to Iraq with Operation New Dawn two years later, according to the outlet.
She was awarded the Air Medal for her bravery in the Middle East and went on to serve in Guatemala and Kuwait in the following years.
In dealing with her gender dysphoria, Ellis talked about striving to become “more successful and more manly,” eventually getting married, adopting a dog, and raising a stepdaughter—pursuing “all the things I thought a good man should do.”
Ellis wrote that in 2020, she was “accepted into the Army’s Warrant Officer Flight Training program. I completed Warrant Officer Candidate School, SERE School (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape), and the UH60 Black Hawk helicopter course.”
The Real Picture
The helicopter is believed to have been flying at a higher than usual altitude when it collided with American Eagle flight 5342, which was approaching Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., just before 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
Shocking video footage captured the two aircraft crashing into each other in a fiery explosion before falling into the icy Potomac River, just east of the airport’s runways.
The three soldiers aboard the Black Hawk, along with the 60 passengers and four crew members on the Bombardier CRJ-700, were all killed.
Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the crash, with recovery operations continuing on Friday as 14 bodies remain in the water.
On Thursday night, it was revealed that an air traffic controller at Reagan Airport had been sent home early, leaving one person do the job of two, meaning managing both plane and helicopter traffic.
Footage of the Black Hawk crashing into the plane’s side has led to speculation that the helicopter might have been at fault.
Robert Isoms, CEO of American Airlines’ parent company American Eagle, raised concerns about why the helicopter had crossed paths with the airliner.
President Trump suggested that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies were to blame, which led some online “sleuths” to target Jo Ellis.