LA News Helicopter Crash Kills Three After Driver's Wrong-Way Rampage Left Two Dead on a Bus

Five people are dead in Los Angeles after a chain of events that started with a wrong-way driver and ended with a burning news helicopter.

According to the Associated Press (carried by both PBS and LAist), Bailee Lynn Rios, 36, of Simi Valley, drove her 2004 Ford Expedition the wrong way down a busy Chatsworth avenue Tuesday night, ran a red light, struck a vehicle, then hit a Los Angeles Metro bus. One passenger was fully ejected, another partially ejected, police said. Two people on the bus died. Six others were hurt.

Rios was arrested Tuesday night on suspicion of murder and is being held on $4 million bail, police confirmed Wednesday. The case now goes to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, which decides what charges, if any, to actually file. No charges have been filed as of Wednesday. Her mother, Cindy Rios, told the AP she was "shocked and saddened," adding: "The fact that my daughter was involved and was the cause of it is just extremely disturbing. If anything, I'm sorry for the other families. My daughter's alive. People lost their lives."

About two hours after that crash, while news crews swarmed the scene to cover it, a second disaster hit. NBC4's NewsChopper4, also used by Telemundo 52, went down between two commercial buildings in the 9100 block of Mason Avenue around 7 p.m., according to the Los Angeles Times. The crash killed reporter Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw, both employees of Angel City Air, the charter company that operated the aircraft, Fox News reported. A third victim, identified by the LA County Medical Examiner's Office as 29-year-old Edy Gutierrez Mejia, died in a nearby parking lot. Mejia was a Guatemalan national who, per NBC News, had arrived in Los Angeles only days before he was killed. Two more people were hospitalized.

Moreno, known on air as "Eli in the Heli," had covered aerial news in LA since 2010 and graduated from Chapman University with a broadcast journalism degree, according to the LA Times. Marciniw, a Southern California native, graduated from Burbank High School in 1974. The two had flown together since 2023.

NBC4 anchor Colleen Williams confirmed the crash live on air Tuesday night after the station lost contact with its crew. "We are going to take a couple of minutes to think about that, to process, and to regroup," she said before cutting to commercial, per the LA Times.

The helicopter's own broadcast feed captured its final seconds. According to the AP, an alarm sounds in the cockpit as the aircraft loses altitude. A woman's voice, apparently Moreno's, says "uh oh," then asks, "You can't pull up?" The feed cuts out as the chopper nears the ground.

Zoey Tur, a veteran news helicopter pilot who has flown the same model aircraft, told the LA Times the sound is consistent with an "emergency horn that sounds when either there's a low RPM issue or the helicopter loses hydraulics," and that the recording appears to capture the engine actually shutting down. Tur said there was enough fuel aboard to explain the fire, but why the rotors stopped is still unknown.

NTSB investigator-in-charge Fabian Salazar told reporters Wednesday that footage is "probably the most important evidence that we have discovered so far." The NTSB, an independent federal agency, is leading the crash investigation alongside the FAA. Salazar said a preliminary report will come within 30 days, but a final determination of cause could take up to 18 months, according to the BBC.

Investigators were still collecting data at the crash site Wednesday, and the aircraft was set to be moved to a secure facility for further examination.

The LA Times issued a correction Wednesday morning after an earlier version of its story said six people died across the two crashes. The confirmed total is five. Breitbart's initial report, citing local TV and citing a secondary aggregator, also left the pedestrian victim unnamed before other outlets confirmed Mejia's identity through the coroner's office. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called it "a very, very, very tragic day," and Gov. Gavin Newsom posted condolences on X, both cited by the Daily Wire and Fox News.

No cause has been officially determined for either crash. Rios has not been formally charged by the DA as of this writing, and the mechanical or human factors behind the helicopter's loss of power remain unresolved pending the NTSB's 30-day preliminary report.