3 killed in Los Angeles news helicopter crash
Three people were killed and one was injured after a news helicopter crashed in Los Angeles while covering an earlier deadly bus crash.
The news that a helicopter went down in Los Angeles County, carrying crew of a local news station, was confirmed on air in an emotional television broadcast by NBC 4 Los Angeles on Sept. 15.
The deadly crash happened just before 7 p.m. local time in Chatsworth, a suburb of Los Angeles, killing two people in the news helicopter and one person on the ground, authorities said.
“We’ve been telling you that we’ve been piecing it together here. We knew it was a news chopper, we knew we’d lost contact with our people out there, and we just received the confirmation that, in fact, NewsChopper4 went down just before 7 o’clock tonight in Chatsworth,” news anchor Colleen Williams said later that night.
“We are going to take a couple of minutes to think about that, to process, and to regroup,” she said before signing off the broadcast.
NBC 4 later identified Angel City Air employees Eliana Moreno, a journalist who reported from the air for NBC 4 and Telemundo 52, and pilot George Marciniw as two of the victims. The third victim on the ground has not been identified by authorities. At least two others were taken to a hospital. Their conditions were not known.
The helicopter crashed as NBC 4 Los Angeles was covering news of an earlier, separate crash between a Metro bus and another vehicle, in which authorities said at least two people died. During that coverage, the station began showing live footage of thick smoke coming from a nearby location. Reporter Robert Kovacik and a camera crew had just arrived on the scene and said he heard a “very, very loud crash.”
“We know it’s something bad just judging from the smoke and the fact the (Los Angeles Police Department) and (Los Angeles Fire Department) peeled out,” Williams said during the broadcast before it was clear that a helicopter had crashed.
Kovacik reported that a chopper had possibly gone down and said a colleague from another station was in tears out of concern.
“We don’t know where this chopper is from,” Kovacik said soon after the crash from a frantic scene of first responders, witnesses and news crews on the ground. “We don’t know if it even is a chopper. We don’t know if it’s a news chopper.”
Soon the station announced it couldn’t reach its own helicopter that was covering the bus crash.
Williams confirmed the helicopter was NewsChopper4 live during the broadcast, about two hours after the crash.