Does a video show Elon Musk's helicopter blocking traffic on a busy road just to get some food? No, that's not true: The video shows a medical helicopter at the scene of a traffic accident involving a concrete truck which tipped over on its side in Southaven, Mississippi, on Oct 31, 2026. Traffic camera footage, Flightradar24 data, and bystander photos corroborate the circumstances of the helicopter and first responders at this location.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by the @JesusChryslerII account on X on Oct. 31, 2026. It read:
What a dicklet
Elon Musk just parked in the middle of Elvis Presley to get some Chicken 🖕
This is what a screenshot of the video in the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @JesusChryslerII on X.)
Text captioning at the top of the video reads:
Elon Musk Parks his helicopter in the middle Elvis Presley Blvd in Memphis while going to get food
The audio track of the video features a man making expletive-laden exclamations that this shows a private helicopter. It doesn't. He says in part:
Bruh. This n_____ have some... this n_____ just parked his helicopter on 51 bruh. Rich-ass n_____.
The video does not show Elvis Presley Blvd in Memphis, Tennessee, but the same road, U.S. Highway 51, on the other side of the state line in Southaven, Mississippi. The helicopter was positioned in the middle of Highway 51, facing south toward the intersection of State Line Road, which is also called Main Street.
The footage in the @JesusChryslerII clip appears to have a compressed perspective, shot from a vantage point higher than the traffic. Telephoto lenses can make landmarks appear closer together than they are in reality. Business Insider explained the phenomenon in an April 29, 2020, article (archived here) when some telephoto photography made it appear that people were not social distancing.
A version of the video posted on Facebook is less blurry than the @JesusChryslerII clip. A screenshot from 17 seconds into the Facebook video (archived here) was used in the Lead Stories composite image (below right). The details (below left) show some of the landmarks along Highway 51 that are visible in the video still. These detail images were taken from 2026 Google Earth street view imagery. Because the street view imagery was not taken from the same vantage point as the video, some objects may seem out of place. For example, the blue banner and the "do not enter" sign appear to have switched positions, but that is a matter of perspective.
(Image Source: Lead Stories composite image with details from 2026 Google data and post by @benny.hunna1 on Facebook.)
Several high-profile accidents have occurred at or near this intersection in recent years. At the time of writing, Nov. 2, 2026, Lead Stories did not find news reports about the cement truck incident accident through Google News (archived here), Yahoo News (archived here), or the Southaven Police Department Facebook page (archived here).
However, there were photos published on Facebook by people who were at the scene, and the photos match the scene shown in the @JesusChryslerII video. One Facebook post (archived here) made at 11:25 a.m. on Oct. 31, 2026 contains four photos (embedded below), including one clear close-up of the burgundy and gray helicopter which is marked, "Hospital Wing". The photos also show the concrete truck tipped over with A to Z Florist in the background. Also visible in both the video and Facebook photos are the blue "West End District" banners hanging from the light poles. One photo shows neon green traffic cones set up in the road. These distinctive traffic cones can be seen on a trailer at 15 seconds in the video.
Lead Stories looked up the archived flight data on FlightRadar24 to see if there was helicopter activity in the area on Oct. 31, 2026. The data (archived here) shows a two-minute flight from that intersection to Baptist Memorial Hospital DeSoto, ending at 15:52 UTC. The reference photo shows a white helicopter -- N861HW, is identified as Hospital Wing operated by Med-Trans, a U.S. air medical transport company. A photo of the helicopter on helis.com (archived here), shows that N861HW is burgundy and gray.
(Image source: Flightradar24.)
There are four traffic cameras at the intersection of Highway 51 and Stateline Road with an online livestream. It is also possible to see archived footage from these cameras. Several still images from each hour of footage are available to preview free of charge. Lead Stories found one camera had several images showing the helicopter (archived here) between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. (select the time and "preview") on Oct. 31, 2026. Another camera included a view that showed a large excavator was working beside the tipped-over concrete truck (archived here) between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. (select the time and "preview").
(Image source: Lead Stories composite image with screenshots from southaven.trafficcamarchive.com.)
Lead Stories has reached out to the Southaven Police Department and will update this article if we receive a reply.
