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Attorney for Civil Rights Corps and former Miss Kansas contestant Kiah Duggins was among those who lost their lives in the DC plane crash incident that happened on January 29, 2025. According to the New York Post, the flight was hit by an Army chopper at the Reagan National Airport after leaving Wichita.
The Civil Rights Corps' official website stated that Kiah Duggins attended Harvard Law School, where she obtained her J.D. Apart from her work in the world of law over the years, she served in various positions at Wichita State University and was employed at places such as the ACLU of Northern California, as stated in her LinkedIn profile.
The news of Kiah Duggins' death was confirmed by her former pageant director Larry E Strong on Facebook, who added her photo in a post uploaded on January 31. Larry mentioned that she won the title of Miss Butler County twice in the past. His statement further read:
"Keep the rest of the family in your thoughts and prayers at this difficult time. Kiah was top 10 finalist in 2014 and 2015 at the Miss Kansas Pageant. Kiah was preparing to be a law professor at Howard University in the fall."
Howard University also shared a post on LinkedIn on January 31, informing the netizens that "plans to honor her legacy will be shared in coming days."
A report by CNN stated that the flight was carrying around 64 people before it crashed into the Potomac River. According to the outlet, 14 individuals are still missing and an investigation has been launched by the National Transportation Safety Board as they have recovered the flight data and black boxes to find more details.
Furthermore, US Figure Skating stated that many people associated with the figure skating community were also inside the flight and they had traveled to Wichita to attend a developmental camp.
Kiah Duggins had a long list of educational experience over the years
According to her bio on the website of the Civil Rights Corps, Kiah Duggins was the president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau when she studied at the Harvard Law School. She pursued her further education at the Wichita State University and completed a Fulbright grant in Taiwan.
Apart from these, she was the Chief of Staff for the Wichita State University Student Government Association in the past, as per her LinkedIn profile. In an interview with the Student Government Resource Center on March 1, 2016, Kiah revealed that she started an initiative called The Princess Project, aimed at the empowerment of girls through various methods.
During the same interview, Kiah Duggins addressed Wichita State University's new food pantry, which was formed due to food insecurity being faced by the students inside the campus. She elaborated on what motivated her to bring a food pantry to the university as she said:
"I got involved in this effort in the summer of 2015 when the Student Body President, Joseph Shepard, had the idea to start a campus food pantry after students came into the SGA office expressing their inability to afford food. It was alarming and enraging to me that students who contribute so much to the university cannot even meet their basic needs."
Kiah Duggins was a resident of Washington D.C. and she fought for matters of unconstitutional policing and money bail practices. According to Times Now, she was in Wichita before her recent death to help her mother after the latter had to undergo surgery.
Duggins' LinkedIn profile revealed that she was a Grant Writing Intern for Rise Against Hunger in 2015 and joined the Executive Office of the President as a Policy Intern the following year. Additionally, she served as a Teaching Assistant for The Fullbright Program and Harvard Law School, and a Summer Associate for the Neufeld Scheck & Brustin, LLP.
Meanwhile, other details related to Kiah Duggins' family and survivors are yet to be made official.
