No, these photos do not show the helicopter crash that killed the pilot of Kenya’s deputy president

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on March 7, 2019 at 14:55
  • 4 min read
  • By Mary KULUNDU

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Images purporting to show the aftermath of the March 3, 2019 helicopter crash that killed the pilot of Kenya’s Deputy President, William Ruto, have been shared in multiple posts on social media. But reverse image searches reveal that the pictures do not show the crash in northern Kenya, which killed four American tourists along with the pilot. They are images of previous accidents, two of which happened in the United States.

As reported by AFP, the helicopter -- which belonged to Ruto -- crashed in the Central Island National Park in Lake Turkana on March 3, killing all five people onboard including Ruto’s pilot, Marious Magonga.

Shortly after news of the accident began spreading on March 4, posts began circulating which included photographs of crashed choppers. Clearly, they do not show the same helicopter -- one post shows the wreckage of a red aircraft; in another, it’s white; in another, it’s blue. So at least two of the posts had to be misleading, showing aircraft from accidents other than the one involving Ruto’s helicopter.

In fact, all three of the posts feature images of earlier helicopter crashes. None of the posts indicated that they were using photos from previous accidents, which would leave many readers assuming they were seeing pictures of the aircraft that had just crashed in Kenya. Let’s look at the first one.

Screenshot of Facebook post purporting to show the helicopter crash that killed the pilot of Kenya’s deputy president

It was posted in a Facebook group called Group Kenya, which has more than 130,000 followers. Here’s an archived version of the post which shared the photos.

A reverse image search on Google showed that the photo first appeared online in October 2018 on articles describing a helicopter crash on a farm in Delaware in the United States. Among other places, it can be found here on the Delaware State Police website, dated October 2018.

Screenshot of a story posted on Delaware State police website on October 7, 2018

The second photo, showing the wreckage of a white aircraft, was posted on Twitter by the blogger Robert Alai, who has more than a million followers. Here’s an archive link to the tweet.

Screenshot of blogger Robert Alai's tweet

But a reverse image search revealed that the photo was taken during an accident in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley region on February 13, 2019.

Here's the same photo, used in a news report at the time:

A screenshot taken on March 7, 2019 shows a news article on the website of Kenyan newspaper The Standard

Comments on the tweet indicated that some Twitter users had correctly identified the image used as an old one.

Screenshot of comments on blogger Robert Alai's tweet

Finally, there’s the image of the blue helicopter which was posted on this Facebook group with more than 950,000 followers.

Screenshot of post published on March 4, 2019 purporting to show helicopter crash that killed the pilot of Kenya’s deputy president

A reverse image search, however, showed the photo first appeared online after an accident in February 2018 in a remote part of the US state of Utah when an elk jumped on to the tail of the low-flying research helicopter.

The local sheriff’s office posted images of the crash at the time.

A screenshot taken on March 7, 2019 shows a Facebook post by the Wasatch County Sheriff's Office

 

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