Pilot From Illinois Among 3 Marines Killed In Osprey Crash

ILLINOIS — A former downstate Illinois resident has been identified as one of the three people who were killed when an Osprey Marine plane crashed in Australia on Sunday night, the U.S. Marines confirmed on Tuesday.

Marine V-22B Osprey pilot Capt. Eleanor V. LeBeau, 29, was one of three people who died in the crash, which took place during a training exercise on Sunday. The Marines said that the Osprey had 23 Marines aboard the aircraft at the time of the crash, which took place in a tropical forest on Melville Island.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of three respected and beloved members of the MRF-D family,” Col. Brendan Sullivan, the commanding officer of the Marine Rotation Force-Darwin, said in a statement.

LeBeau and Maj. Tobin J. Lewis were piloting the aircraft and died in the crash, along with Corp. Spencer Collart, who was serving as the Osprey crew chief, officials said.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch reported Tuesday that LeBeau was a 2012 graduate of Althoff Catholic High School in Belleville and went on to attend Murray State University. She joined the Marine Corps in 2018 and became an Osprey pilot, serving stints in four states.

Victoria LeBeau, the pilot’s mother, told the Belleville News-Democrat, that she will remember her daughter as a hero. The newspaper reported that the Marines visited the family’s home in Belleville to confirm the Marine’s death.

Eleanor LeBeau married another Marine pilot, Chase Cooke, who was not in Australia at the time of the crash. Her mother said her daughter is one of seven children who are all part of a military family, the newspaper reported.

“We’re very proud of her, and by giving her life, she saved 20 other people,” Victoria LeBeau told the newspaper.

“I want the world to know who my daughter was and what she did for this country.”