LOS ANGELES, CA — A Simi Valley woman was arrested on murder charges Wednesday after authorities say she drove her SUV into a Los Angeles city bus at high speed, killing two bus riders and injuring six others in a crash that later drew an NBC news helicopter to the scene — where it went down in flames, killing three more people.
The twin disasters, separated by roughly two hours and several city blocks, left five people dead in the Chatsworth neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley on Tuesday evening. Bailee Lynn Rios, 36, is accused of causing the first crash by running a red light at what witnesses described as freeway speed. She is being held on $4 million bail. The chain of events also claimed the lives of an experienced aerial journalist, a veteran pilot, and a bystander in a parking lot — turning what began as a routine traffic call into one of the worst single-night tragedies in Los Angeles television news history.
The bus collision happened at approximately 5 p.m. Tuesday when Rios allegedly drove her Ford SUV into the side of Metro Line 166 bus. The impact wedged the front half of the vehicle into the bus’s frame. Witnesses told police the SUV was traveling at “freeway speed” when it ran the red light and struck the bus broadside. Two passengers aboard the bus were killed: Gage Weida, 31, identified Wednesday morning by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office, and Daniel Castillo, 46. Six others were injured, some critically. An urban search and rescue team worked to free at least one person found trapped beneath the vehicle. That individual was pulled out and transported to a hospital with what crews on scene described as “crushing” injuries. At the height of the response, more than 70 Los Angeles Fire Department personnel were on scene. Rios was taken into custody and police said she is suspected of reckless driving, running a red light, and a possible DUI, with toxicology results still pending.
About two hours after the bus collision, the NBC4 and Telemundo 52 news helicopter — a Eurocopter AS350 operated by Angel City Air and known as NewsChopper4 — arrived over the area to provide aerial coverage. The chopper went down near a large storage facility at the intersection of Nordhoff Street and DeSoto Avenue, not far from where the bus had been struck. At least four cars and two storage containers caught fire after the helicopter hit the ground and burst into flames. Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti, a former investigator for both the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration, said the alarm heard in the helicopter’s final broadcast footage sounds consistent with a low rotor RPM warning horn — a signal that the main rotor is no longer spinning fast enough to keep the aircraft airborne. “It just has all the earmarks of a potential loss of engine power and a dangerous decrease in the main rotor speed,” Guzzetti said. He added that the pilot appeared to attempt an emergency maneuver designed to use airflow to force the rotor to spin, but said the helicopter had been hovering at low altitude, leaving little room to recover. The NTSB and FAA said investigators would arrive Wednesday to begin a formal inquiry into the cause of the crash.
The helicopter’s final moments were captured on the crew’s own broadcast feed. An alarm begins sounding in the cockpit. A woman’s voice says “uh oh.” The aircraft moves quickly away from the bus crash site and begins losing altitude. The same voice asks, “You can’t pull up?” The video cuts out as the helicopter nears the ground. Killed in the crash were reporter Eliana Moreno, 38, and pilot George Marciniw, 70 — both employees of Angel City Air. A third victim, identified by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office as Edy Gutierrez Mejia, 29, was killed on the ground in the parking lot where the helicopter came down. Moreno, born in Orange County, had been covering aerial news for more than 15 years. She earned a broadcast journalism and political science degree from Chapman University in 2010 and joined Angel City Air that same year. She had worked at KCAL 9 and KCBS 2 before joining NBC4 around 2018 or 2019, and had been flying regularly with Marciniw since 2023. Moreno had recently become engaged to her longtime partner, Robert Barrientos, 47, the couple having announced their engagement the previous October. Marciniw, 70, grew up in Southern California and graduated from Burbank High School in 1974. A fellow pilot, Esteban Jimenez, told NBC4 that Marciniw had been his flight instructor. “I just talked to him on Sunday,” Jimenez said. “We were talking about the aviation business and retiring.”
NBC4 reporter Robert Kovacik was already on the ground at the bus crash scene when he spotted the black smoke rising nearby. His frantic effort to reach the helicopter crash site was broadcast live on NBC4. Blocked by law enforcement, Kovacik pleaded with officers to let him through. “Dude, that’s my crew in there, that is my own crew,” he said on air. A police officer responded that evacuations were underway and that the area was not safe. Kovacik encountered Fox 11 reporter Ed Laskos near the scene, who told him the downed aircraft was a news helicopter. For several minutes, neither NBC4 nor Kovacik knew it was their own station’s chopper. Back in the studio, anchor Colleen Williams told viewers through tears, “We are not in contact with our television news helicopter. We have lost contact with our people.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass later arrived at the scene and was seen consoling Kovacik. “Losing five Angelenos is very painful,” Bass said in a public statement. “And I know this community of Chatsworth, hit hard, will be grieving for some time.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom also offered condolences, thanking emergency crews responding to both crashes.
Rios faces murder charges connected to the deaths caused by the bus collision. The Los Angeles Police Department said it would formally present the charges to the district attorney’s office and that the investigation into the crash remained active, including the pending DUI toxicology results. Her bail was set at $4.03 million, according to the Daily Mail, though other reports put the figure at $4 million. No attorney representing Rios had been identified as of Wednesday afternoon. The NTSB and FAA investigations into the helicopter crash are separate proceedings and are expected to take months to complete. NBC4 and Telemundo 52 said in a joint statement that they are “deeply saddened” and extended “heartfelt condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of those who lost their lives.” The intersection where both crashes occurred was expected to remain closed for an extended period as investigators processed both scenes. The station noted that this marks the second aviation tragedy in its history — the first occurring in 1977, when a KNBC helicopter piloted by former CIA U-2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers crashed after running out of fuel while returning from a wildfire assignment near Santa Barbara, killing Powers and his camera operator.
News helicopter crashes in the United States are rare but not unprecedented. According to a review of federal accident records and news accounts, at least eight fatal crashes involving news helicopters have occurred in the country since 2000, killing 16 people. Those incidents include a 2023 crash in a New Jersey forest that killed the pilot and a photographer aboard a helicopter operated for Philadelphia station WPVI, and a 2022 crash beside a Charlotte, North Carolina, interstate that killed a pilot and meteorologist on a training flight for WBTV. Guzzetti noted that news helicopter operations — especially in major cities like Los Angeles, where multiple aircraft often converge on breaking incidents — carry inherent risks. Pilots coordinate closely over radio to maintain safe distances, and the industry shares safety lessons across operators. “It’s a very unique form of flying,” Guzzetti said. “And so because of that, you don’t hear about too many of those accidents. So they’re rare, but they do occur, just because the mission is a risky one.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, Rios remained jailed pending formal filing of murder charges with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office. NTSB and FAA investigators were on their way to Chatsworth to begin examining the helicopter wreckage, with a full probable-cause determination expected to take many months. The intersection of Nordhoff Street and DeSoto Avenue, where NewsChopper4 came down, remained closed as hazmat crews finished cleaning up jet fuel from the parking lot.
