In 2017, Air Force Captain Joni Marquez, the firing officer on an AC-130 gunship which accompanied Extortion 17 on the final flight, made a similar claim. Ranger assault helicopters had already engaged the enemy and killed six of eight insurgents, causing the other two to retreat. "I had the sensor operators immediately shift to the eight insurgents the helicopters had taken out," Marquez told Circa, in her first interview about the incident.