A Plane Crashed & Killed Someone During A Gender Reveal Party — And No One Noticed
When is enough, enough?
@aviationbrk / X In San Pedro, Mexico, a gender reveal party turned fatal after the celebration led to a plane crash, placing the pilot in critical condition until he was delivered to a nearby hospital where he ultimately died.
The gender reveal party continued despite the plane crash.
In the video, posted online by the Breaking Aviation News & Videos X (formerly known as Twitter) account, you can see between the throngs of people that some immediately rushed toward the location where the plane was crashing. For the most part, however, people cheered. Everyone looked on at the massive light-up signs that spelled out “Oh Baby,” surrounded by balloons and the happy, expecting couple standing in front.
They saw the plane fly overhead and release the pink powder, and they cheered.
Maybe they were woefully unaware of the situation that played out just over their heads. Maybe they were trying not to think about the man whose life was in danger, lest it ruin the celebration — the cameraman certainly captured the crash and panned back to the couple. Either way, a 32-year-old man named Luis Ángel died that day.
According to @aviationbrk, Ángel’s Piper PA-25 left wing failed, collapsing and sending the plane into a spiral until it ultimately crashed into the ground. Ángel was a Navolato resident, the same municipality in which San Pedro resides, within the Sinaloa state.
Authorities reported to CNN en Español that the pilot died following the crash. Alan Francisco Rangel of the Sinaloa Red Cross told CNN that paramedics on the scene attempted to treat Ángel at the crash site before taking him to a local hospital where he succumbed to his wounds.
What was supposed to be a celebration of life turned into a terrible tragedy that resulted in one man’s death, and the question on everyone’s mind seems to be the same — when is enough, enough?
The situation has left people questioning the necessity of such extravagant gender reveal parties.
This isn’t the first time they’ve ended in tragedy.
At a 2017 gender reveal party in Arizona, guests were asked to shoot a target that would explode, releasing powder that would determine the baby’s gender. Instead, the highly explosive material, Tannerite, loaded inside of the target caused a wildfire spanning 47,000 acres. Guests found out that the baby was a boy, and that the father would be paying more than $8 million in restitution after he was found guilty.
In October 2019, a 56-year-old woman was killed in Iowa after a gender reveal party hosted an explosion that sent debris flying and ultimately striking her.
Experts say gender reveal parties are outdated.
Outside of the potential dangers, there’s also the fact that the idea of gender has progressed to a point where it’s impossible to determine a new life’s gender. Biological sex? Maybe — but gender identity is a completely different story.
"The main problem is that gender-reveal parties reinforce several ideas about gender, which are pretty bad for kids and for society in general,” psychologist Dr. Meg-John Barker told Vogue India. “Here are three main points: that gender is the most important thing we can know about a person; that we can know what gender somebody is going to be by knowing what their genitals are like; and that gender is binary, so they're either a boy or a girl.”
In fact, even the mom who "invented" gender reveal parties has since called them "cringey," stating, "The insane levels people are taking them just to celebrate one of the most mundane facts about their child is just bizarre."
It's undoubtedly exciting to celebrate new life, but those celebrations already occur during baby showers. And most importantly, a celebration should never even get to the point where dangers need to be assessed.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.