Texas helicopter images miscaptioned as crash killing Iran's Raisi
The DPS operates 14 AS350s, according to its website.
(Reuters) - Months-old images of a U.S. police helicopter crash in Texas have been misrepresented online as a May 19 helicopter crash in northwest Iran that killed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister.
Two images posted to Instagram show a white helicopter with the registration number “N204TX” and captioned: “The wreckage of Iranian President Raisi’s helicopter has been found.”
But they are in fact images of a U.S. police helicopter that crashed in Texas in January. Texan media outlets published the same photos at the time, on Jan. 11 and 12.
Registration number N204TX, seen beneath the rotor mast in the Instagram photos, is for a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS)
Eurocopter AS350 B2, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s online registry.
The DPS operates 14 AS350s, according to its website.
Raisi’s helicopter was a Bell 212, Reuters reported, and images supplied to Reuters of the craft taking off show a white-and-blue twin-blade aircraft with no visible registration number below its rotor mast.
The DPS did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
VERDICT
Miscaptioned. The images show a crashed helicopter in Texas in January 2024 and are unrelated to the crash that killed Iran’s president in May 2024.
