Jo Ellis, a transgender woman who was wrongfully identified as the pilot involved in the January 29 Washington DC helicopter collision that ended the lives of 67 people, is suing Matthew Wallace, a social media user who allegedly blamed her for the crash. Ellis says Wallace’s misinformed posts led to her receiving transphobic hate messages that made her fear for her and her family’s safety.

Ellis has filed her lawsuit in a Colorado federal court and is represented by the Equality Legal Action Fund, an advocacy organization that defends wrongly accused or harassed LGBTQ+ people. She says Wallace “concocted a destructive and irresponsible” campaign that monetized a “false narrative” to his over 2 million social media followers, The Guardian reported.

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While Wallace later published posts to correct the misinformation, Ellis’s lawsuit says these posts were “making excuses for creating viral lies.” Wallace’s X account primarily posts videos and screenshots of various right-wing rumors and beliefs.

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“[Ellis] was forced into the public sphere and can no longer remain a private citizen [because of Wallace],” her lawsuit states. “Given her immediate notoriety and the fact that she is a transgender woman, she fears for the immediate safety of herself and her family on account of the hate inspired against her by Defendant’s lies.”

The initial crash involved a Black Hawk military helicopter that collided with an American Eagle commercial airplane from Wichita, Kansas, ending the lives of everyone aboard both aircraft. After the collision — the first commercial plane incident to cause loss of lives in the U.S. in 16 years — the president blamed “diversity” (i.e. unqualified female and non-white pilots). The helicopter’s actual operators at the time of the crash were Ryan O’Hara and Andrew Eaves, two cisgender white men.

Soon after the crash, a social media user on X who goes by “FakeGayPolitics” blamed Ellis. While Ellis wasn’t involved, she is a helicopter pilot with the Virginia National Guard. She earned the Air Medal for “acts of heroism or meritorious achievement while participating in aerial flight.”

The misinformation about her began spreading on social networks and a few news websites — some included a photo of her face and details of her military involvement. A Pakistani news website listed her as the “rumored” third pilot, and the U.K. publication The Daily Mail contacted her personal cell phone to ask if she was still alive.

By January 31, her name began trending on X, with many transphobic commenters saying she deliberately caused the crash in response to the president’s executive order seeking to ban trans military members.

Ellis said of her own social media posts that she never published any statements against the president but merely said that she wanted to keep serving in the military.

She then posted a Facebook video to try and stop the misinformation, saying, “It is insulting to the families to try to tie this to some sort of political agenda. They don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve this. And I hope that you all know that I am alive and well, and this should be sufficient for you all to end all the rumors.”

However, she continued to receive hateful messages. Some said they wished she had died in the crash, others called her “mentally ill” or made other crass, transphobic comments, The Guardian reported.

She packed some bags, armed herself, arranged some additional personal security and then left her house for the night, worried that someone might try to locate her through public records and try to harm her or her family.

Ellis has said that she plans on donating any monetary damages from her lawsuit to families of those who lost their lives in the collision.

“I believe in free speech, but I also believe in consequences to free speech,” Ellis told The New York Times. “If you can stir up a mob because you say something that’s not true, that’s your right. But once the mob comes after someone, you’ve got to have some consequences.”

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