Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely shared on social media platforms. The video featured a man hanging onto a helicopter. It was claimed that the video was from Bihar in India. However, during the investigation, we found that the video was from Kenya and not India.
Claim:
Facebook user Anuj Yadav shared the video on his profile with a misleading claim.
Other users are also sharing the same video with similar claims.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from viral video.
We found a news report that carried the screenshots from the viral video.
The news report published in April this year stated: Hanging in the sky because he couldn’t get a ride, a man in Kenya caused panic among the crowd at a wedding when he clung to the landing gear of a helicopter that was taking off. According to information from local police, the incident happened on April 13, when a helicopter was preparing to leave Rapogi village in Kenya.
The Telegraph reported that the man was identified as Stephen Odhiambo Ouma (28 years old). He had previously asked the people in the helicopter for money and a ride, but his request was not met.
The website had also embedded the video into the article.
We also found the video story about the incident on the YouTube page of ‘spot on news’. The video was uploaded 6 months ago.
We found that several websites had carried the news report about the same.
We also found the pictures from the viral video on Facebook.
Conclusion: Old video from Kenya of a man clinging on to a helicopter is being widely shared as recent from Bihar in India. The viral claim is misleading.
