Jo Ellis

Jo Ellis is a Black Hawk pilot and member of the Virginia National Guard. In the aftermath of the January 2025 Potomac River mid-air collision she was mistakenly identified by a user on Twitter as the helicopter's pilot in a post viewed nearly 5 million times within the next six months. The accusation and its fallout have been connected to other similar incidents blaming trans people for prominent violent incidents.

Early life Ellis grew up in a conservative religious home. She was primarily home schooled. She has said she had gender dysphoria from the age of five. She was deployed to Iraq in 2011, serving as a door gunner, to Guatemala in 2014, and to Kuwait in 2016. As of October 2025 she was being processed out. On October 17, talk show host Michael Smerconish asked South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace about Ellis's case. Mace became angry and hung up on Smerconish after calling Ellis a "guy in a dress".

Collision misidentification In January 2025, after the 2025 Potomac River mid-air collision, Ellis was misidentified by a prominent user, whom USA Today termed a "right-wing influencer" on Twitter as the pilot; the post went viral, becoming the second highest trending topic on Twitter, and by July 2025 the user's original post getting nearly 5 million views. The account owner, connecting the collision to a piece Ellis had written about being trans and in the military, wrote that Ellis had "a long letter about ‘Gender Dysphoria’ and depression 1 day before the fatal crash!" and called it a "trans terror attack".

NPR, NBC, and Wired connected the misidentification to what Wired termed a "rising trend on the conservative internet: right-wing accounts blaming transgender people for a national tragedy or a violent incident".

Kill Tony Ellis appeared in an episode of Kill Tony, in which she performed standup and did an interview with Tony Hinchcliffe. She described it as a way of reaching out to a broader audience to tell her story.