An NBC4 Los Angeles news helicopter crashed into a parking lot in Chatsworth Tuesday evening while covering a separate fatal bus collision, killing all three people aboard or on the ground, including a veteran aerial photojournalist and a pilot with more than 14,000 flight hours.
Photojournalist Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw died when News4Chopper lost altitude and slammed into the parking lot around 7 p.m. local time. A 29-year-old pedestrian, Edy Gutierrez Mejia, was also killed. Dispatch audio obtained by TMZ captured the chaos in real time, an out-of-breath male voice calling for backup, a dispatcher initially reporting a helicopter collision with a structure, and the dawning realization that the downed aircraft belonged to a local news station.
The crash came just blocks from the scene of a bus collision that had already claimed two lives and injured six others. Several news helicopters were airborne covering that wreck when News4Chopper went down, turning one tragedy into two.
Marciniw was a longtime flight instructor who owned several helicopters and had logged more than 14,000 hours of flight time, the New York Post reported. He and Moreno had worked together since 2023, often sharing photos and videos of their aerial assignments on social media. Moreno had been with Angel City Air Inc., the company that operates News4Chopper for NBC4, since September 2010, a career spanning more than fifteen years of covering police pursuits, shootings, and brush fires from above Los Angeles.
She had recently posted about the job she loved.
In what turned out to be one of her final public statements, Moreno wrote about the work:
"It just goes to show the power that we have from being the eye in the sky."
Moreno got engaged to her partner, Robert Barrientos, in October 2025. She was still in the early months of planning a life beyond the cockpit when the helicopter went down.
Released footage from the helicopter's last moments includes an unidentified female voice asking a single, urgent question: "You can't pull up?" Seconds later, the aircraft struck the ground. Flames erupted at the crash site, setting nearby cars ablaze and forcing police to close surrounding streets over fuel-leakage concerns. Fire crews worked to contain the blaze.
Fox News reported that a fourth person was injured in the crash and hospitalized, a detail that underscores how much worse the ground toll could have been in a populated parking lot.
Back in the NBC4 studio, anchor Colleen Williams learned in real time that the station had lost contact with its crew. She confirmed the deaths on air, visibly shaken:
"We knew it was a news chopper. We knew we'd lost contact with our people out there, and we've just received confirmation."
Williams paused before adding: "We are going to take a couple of minutes to think about that, process it." The broadcast continued, but the weight of the moment was plain.
The two stations released a brief statement, as The U.S. Sun reported:
"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. We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of those who lost their lives."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom also weighed in, saying, "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."
Both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board confirmed they will investigate the crash. The FAA and NTSB provided statements to The U.S. Sun, and officials said the NTSB will handle updates going forward. No cause has been identified. Investigators have not said whether mechanical failure, weather, pilot error, or some other factor played a role.
That gap matters. News helicopters operate in some of the most congested airspace in the country, often circling the same event at the same time, as several were doing Tuesday evening over the bus crash. How the aircraft lost altitude, and whether anything could have prevented the descent, are questions the NTSB will now have to answer.
The dispatch audio, meanwhile, fills in the minutes between impact and organized response. An out-of-breath voice on the recording called out, "I'm gonna need fire, we're gonna have them come," as first responders scrambled toward the burning wreckage. The dispatcher initially described a helicopter colliding with a structure before clarifying that the aircraft was affiliated with a news organization.
Eliana Moreno spent sixteen years in the sky over Los Angeles. George Marciniw spent decades behind the controls, accumulating flight hours that most pilots never approach. Edy Gutierrez Mejia, 29, was simply in a parking lot at the wrong moment. All three are dead, and the federal investigation is only beginning.
The people who do the dangerous, unglamorous work, flying into breaking news, walking through a parking lot on a Tuesday night, are the ones who pay the price when something goes wrong. They deserve answers, and so do their families.
