Clip of Helicopter Crash From US Passed Off as Recent Visual From Ukraine
The video dates back to March 2022, when a helicopter crashed and caught fire in Rowlett, United States.
Fact-Check | The video predates the recent helicopter crash that happened in Kyiv, Ukraine.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
A video of a helicopter spiralling and crashing down to the ground is being shared linking it to the recent helicopter that happened in Kyiv, Ukraine on 18 January.
What are users claiming?: The clip is being circulated with a caption mentioning that it is an exclusive footage from the recent crash in Ukraine.
An archive of the post can be seen here.
At the time of writing this report, the video had recorded more than 58,000 views. (Archives of similar claims can be found here, here, and here.)
What is the truth?: The viral video is old and unrelated to the helicopter crash in Ukraine.
It is reportedly from March 2022, when a helicopter crashed and caught fire in Rowlett, a city in Texas, United States.
Two people, including the pilot, were killed in the incident.
How did we find out?: We divided the video into several keyframes using InVID, a video verification tool, and performed a reverse image search on them.
This led us to the same video uploaded on the official channel of WFAA, a television station based in Texas.
It was uploaded on 26 March 2022 and was titled, "Helicopter crash in Rowlett captured on cellphone video."
The clip's description mentioned that two people died in the crash.
It further said that the crash happened near the 2200 block of Lakeview Parkway, near Dexham Road.
A report in Fox News mentioned that a detective was nearby when the crash happened and he told the organisation that nobody on the ground was hurt because of it.
It also said that the helicopter was owned by Sky Helicopter, a company in Garland, a city in Texas.
Further, we found a tweet posted by the Rowlett Police Department which said that two people were killed in the helicopter crash.
Kyiv's tragic crash: A helicopter crashed and slammed down near a building in an eastern suburb of Ukraine's Kyiv, which resulted in the death of 18 people including the country's interior affairs minister.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the incident as "a terrible tragedy."
Conclusion: The video of the helicopter crash is from United States and not Ukraine, as claimed.
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