Does a video show a "drone down" in New Jersey? No, that's not true: This footage shows the wreckage of a small plane that crashed on Interstate 684 in Greenwich, Connecticut, on December 12, 2024. There were two people on board the plane, but only the pilot survived.
The video appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on December 16, 2024. It was captioned:
Drone Crashes!! #story #drone #newjersey #ufo #uap #storytime
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Dec 17 21:57:33 2024 UTC)
The Facebook reel contains three clips. This fact check will look only at the first clip and does not extend to the second and third clips, which show flickering lights in Pittsburgh and a light pillar in Dearborn, Michigan.
A reverse image search of a screenshot from the footage (archived here) with Google Lens returned results from several news outlets. NBC 10 News in Providence, Rhode Island, published an article (archived here) on December 13, 2024, titled, "Passenger killed, pilot survives small plane crash on Interstate 684 in Connecticut." The article includes a slideshow of five images (Image 2 pictured below) that show the plane crashed in the interstate highway median, and the first responders in the lanes of the highway on either side.
The image is captioned:
Connecticut Plane Crash
A small plane sits in the median of Interstate 684 in Greenwich, Connecticut, Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024. (WNBC)
(Source: turnto10.com screenshot taken on Tue Dec 17 22:29:22 2024 UTC)
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims about drones can be found here.
