A television news helicopter covering a fatal Metro bus crash in the San Fernando Valley went down and burst into flames Tuesday evening, killing three people in a tragedy that unfolded live on air and left a visibly shaken Los Angeles news community reeling hours later. The crash happened in the Chatsworth neighborhood, a short distance from the very accident scene the helicopter had been sent to cover, turning a routine aerial news assignment into a second fatal incident within the same evening.
The chain of events began just after 5 p.m., when the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to a crash involving a Los Angeles Metro bus and an SUV in the 20900 block of West Nordhoff Street. That initial collision killed at least two people and injured six others, drawing multiple television news helicopters to the scene to provide live aerial coverage, a standard practice for major traffic incidents in a city where breaking news often unfolds first through the lens of a circling news chopper. Hours later, just before 7 p.m., one of those aircraft, NewsChopper4, operated by Angel City Air and used by NBC4 Los Angeles and Telemundo 52, went down near a large storage facility a short distance from the original crash site.
NBC4 anchor Colleen Williams was on air when the helicopter went down, confirming live to viewers that the station’s own chopper had crashed. Her voice audibly shaking, she told viewers the team needed a moment to process what had happened before the broadcast abruptly cut away. The moment has since been widely described as one of the more harrowing instances of a tragedy unfolding in real time on live local news, with the station’s own coverage interrupted by the loss of its own aircraft and crew mid-broadcast.
NBC4 later confirmed that two of the three people killed in the helicopter crash were Angel City Air employees Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw. Moreno, originally from Orange County, earned a degree in broadcast journalism and political science from Chapman University before joining the Angel City Air helicopter team in 2010, going on to become a familiar voice for NBC4 and Telemundo 52 viewers during years of aerial news coverage across Southern California. She had been flying alongside Marciniw since 2023. NBC4 and Telemundo 52 Los Angeles released a joint statement saying they were deeply saddened by the loss and extended their condolences to the families, friends, and colleagues of those killed. A third victim at the helicopter crash site has not yet been publicly identified.
The combined toll from both incidents left at least six people dead and multiple others injured across the two crash sites, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass spoke at a news conference Tuesday night alongside fire officials, describing the loss as deeply painful for the city and specifically for the Chatsworth community. Bass and other officials were seen embracing a crying NBC reporter at the scene, who was also comforted by fellow journalists, a moment that underscored how directly this tragedy struck within the close-knit local news community covering it. California Governor Gavin Newsom posted on social media thanking the emergency crews who responded to both crashes, saying his thoughts were with the victims and their families.
Firefighters were able to extinguish the resulting blaze, though the fire from the helicopter crash damaged four vehicles and two storage containers at the site, according to fire department officials. The Los Angeles Police Department’s Central Division posted a message on social media extending condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of the NBC4 team, noting that at the time of the post it remained unclear exactly how many people had been aboard the aircraft when it went down.
Investigators have already moved to determine what caused the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed it will lead the investigation into the incident, with the Federal Aviation Administration also participating, a standard division of responsibility for civil aviation accidents in the United States. Given that the helicopter was actively engaged in live news coverage at the time it crashed, and that its final moments were partially captured on the very broadcast it was providing footage for, investigators will likely have an unusually detailed record of the aircraft’s final flight path to work from as they piece together what went wrong.
News helicopter operations carry inherent risk that rarely gets discussed publicly until a tragedy like this one forces the conversation. Aerial news crews frequently operate in challenging conditions, flying at lower altitudes over urban environments, often at night or during rapidly evolving breaking news situations, and sometimes in close proximity to other aircraft covering the same story simultaneously. Tuesday’s crash, occurring while multiple helicopters were reportedly covering the same bus collision, will likely draw scrutiny toward airspace coordination protocols among competing news outlets covering the same breaking incident, alongside the more standard mechanical and pilot-related factors any NTSB investigation routinely examines.
For Los Angeles, a city whose local television stations have long relied on helicopter coverage as a signature element of breaking news reporting, Tuesday’s crash represents a profound loss felt directly within the industry itself. Moreno and Marciniw were not simply names on a broadcast credit, they were the eyes in the sky that Southern California viewers had relied on for years to make sense of unfolding emergencies, and their deaths, covering exactly that kind of emergency, have left colleagues across multiple news organizations publicly mourning a tragedy that hit unusually close to home.
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