A 36-year-old woman faces murder charges after prosecutors say she plowed an SUV into a Los Angeles Metro bus at high speed, killing two passengers and setting off a catastrophic chain of events that left five people dead, including an NBC news crew whose helicopter crashed while covering the wreckage.
Bailee Lynn Rios was booked on suspicion of murder Wednesday morning and held on $4.03 million bail after her 2004 Ford Expedition struck a Metro Line 166 bus around 5 p.m. Tuesday in the Chatsworth area of Los Angeles. The collision killed bus passengers Gage Weida, 31, and Daniel Castillo, 46, and injured six others, some critically, with at least one person suffering what authorities described as "crushing" injuries after being trapped beneath wreckage. Police suspect Rios was driving at freeway speed, ran a red light, and may have been under the influence. DUI test results remain pending.
About two hours later, NBC's NewsChopper4, dispatched to film the bus collision from above, suddenly lost altitude and dropped into a parking lot at the intersection of Nordhoff Street and DeSoto Avenue, roughly 1.5 miles from the original crash site. The helicopter burst into flames on impact, killing aerial reporter Eliana Moreno, 38, pilot George Marciniw, 70, and a bystander on the ground identified by Fox News as Edy Gutierrez Mejia.
Five people dead. Two separate crash sites. One reckless driver at the center of it all, and an LAPD murder charge that holds Rios accountable not just for the bus passengers she struck, but for the deadly sequence her actions put in motion.
Police say Rios T-boned the Metro bus with enough force to eject at least one passenger. More than 70 LA Fire Department personnel responded at the height of the emergency, and the city's Urban Search and Rescue Team worked to free people pinned in the wreckage. The Daily Mail reported that one victim was extracted from under the vehicle and loaded into an ambulance with crushing injuries.
The medical examiner identified Weida on Wednesday morning. Castillo, 46, was also confirmed dead at the scene. Six other passengers were hospitalized, though their current conditions have not been publicly updated.
LAPD said it would present the murder charges to the Los Angeles County district attorney and that the investigation was continuing. Whether prosecutors formally accept those charges remains an open question, one that will determine whether Rios faces trial for the full scope of destruction her actions allegedly caused.
The chain of events that followed the initial collision turned a single traffic disaster into one of the deadliest evenings in recent Los Angeles memory.
NBC4 dispatched NewsChopper4 to provide aerial coverage of the bus crash. Moreno, a veteran aerial reporter who had been flying in news helicopters since 2010, was aboard with Marciniw, a pilot who had logged more than 14,000 flight hours. The two had been flying together since 2023.
At approximately 6:55 p.m., something went wrong. Audio captured from inside the helicopter recorded Marciniw saying "uh oh" before Moreno asked, "You can't pull up?" Witnesses and dashcam footage showed the aircraft dropping rapidly. A driver named Year Valencia, who captured the descent on a dashcam, told Fox News the helicopter appeared as "a little dot on the video" before it "just goes down."
The helicopter slammed into a parking lot near two warehouses and between two shipping containers, igniting a fire that spread to at least four nearby vehicles and two storage containers. LA Fire Department Captain Branden Silverman told reporters the aircraft was "pretty well destroyed."
An unidentified friend of the helicopter crew suggested to Fox Los Angeles that the crash resulted from engine failure, calling it "heartbreaking to see the engine quit." But no official cause has been determined. Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency that investigates aviation accidents, are conducting their own probes. NTSB investigator Fabian Salazar said the helicopter's final broadcast footage, which captured sounds consistent with engine speed changes and cockpit advisory tones, may provide critical evidence.
The tragedy echoes other recent losses in broadcast aviation. A Telemundo station chief was among seven killed in a Kenya helicopter crash not long ago, a grim reminder of the risks media crews accept every time they go airborne.
NBC4 reporter Robert Kovacik was on the ground covering the bus crash when his station's anchors interrupted his live broadcast. Anchor Colleen Williams, her voice tense, told him to move toward a massive plume of black smoke rising nearby. "We understand there may be an aircraft down," Williams said on air. "We don't have any more specific information than that."
Kovacik drove toward the smoke. When firefighters and police blocked his path, he pushed back. As Just The News reported, the scene was chaotic, with first responders working to contain the blaze and clear the area.
Kovacik told officers plainly:
"Dude, that's my crew in there, that is my own crew."
A police officer responded: "We are gonna get them evacuated. This isn't safe." But Kovacik pressed forward, telling them, "Trust me, I am putting my own life in my own hands."
Fox 11 reporter Ed Laskos, already at the scene, confirmed the worst. He put his arms around Kovacik and told him: "It's a chopper, a media chopper." Kovacik asked, "Are you ok? It's not you guys, is it?" Laskos confirmed it was not his station's aircraft.
Back in the studio, Williams fought through tears as the reality set in. "We are not in contact with our television news helicopter," she said. Then, moments later: "We have lost contact with our people."
Eliana Moreno graduated from Chapman University in 2010 with degrees in broadcast journalism and political science. She went straight into aerial reporting, working first at KCAL 9 and KCBS 2 before joining NBC around 2018 or 2019. Her Instagram account, "Eli in the Heli," documented a life defined by long hours and a love of the work.
In one post, she wrote: "After working 76 hours since Sunday, I'm almost done! I can't complain though because I have the best job in the world." After completing the Hoag OC half-marathon in under two hours, a feat she tackled despite lifelong asthma, she posted: "I did something I never thought I would ever do. I surpassed everything I thought I could ever do, so let's see what I do next!"
In October, Moreno and her longtime boyfriend, Robert Barrientos, 47, announced their engagement on Facebook. They had been together at least three years. She was 38 years old.
Marciniw, 70, brought decades of experience to the cockpit. His 14,000-plus hours of flight time made him one of the most seasoned news helicopter pilots in the Los Angeles market. A friend of both crew members told Fox Los Angeles he was "lost for words."
Southern California has seen no shortage of tragedy in recent months. Elsewhere in the region, a California woman was charged with murdering her husband at a luxury Palm Desert condominium, another reminder of the violence that continues to grip communities across the state.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass visited the scene Tuesday night and embraced Kovacik. She posted on social media that she was "absolutely devastated by the loss of life in Chatsworth tonight," adding that her "heart is with the families and loved ones of those we lost in the tragic bus collision and helicopter crash."
California Governor Gavin Newsom shared condolences as well: "Our hearts are with the victims and families of tonight's devastating Metro bus and helicopter crashes in Chatsworth, and with the entire NBC4 family." FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called it "very sad news."
NBC4 and Telemundo issued a joint statement Tuesday night: "We are deeply saddened to share that a helicopter providing aerial news coverage for NBC4 and Telemundo 52 was involved in a fatal accident in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening."
Condolences are appropriate. But the officials offering them preside over a city and state where reckless driving continues to claim lives at an alarming rate. The intersection where the bus was struck will remain closed for "quite some time," authorities said. The families of Weida, Castillo, Moreno, Marciniw, and Gutierrez Mejia will carry the consequences far longer than that.
Los Angeles has become all too familiar with scenes of chaos and loss. Just recently, a Compton man was sentenced to federal prison for violence during unrest in the city, another chapter in a region where lawlessness and its consequences keep piling up.
The identity of the third person killed on the ground, Gutierrez Mejia, per Fox News, has not been confirmed by all agencies involved. The cause of the helicopter crash remains under federal investigation. Whether the district attorney formally accepts the murder charge against Rios has not been announced. And the conditions of the six surviving bus passengers remain unknown to the public.
Five people are dead because one driver allegedly ran a red light. The law says that when your reckless choices set deadly consequences in motion, you own all of them. Rios should answer for every one.
