Driver arrested in a bus collision that happened before a deadly news
helicopter crash in LA
[September 17, 2026]
By JAIMIE DING, HALLIE GOLDEN and DAVE COLLINS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A motorist was arrested on murder charges after
authorities say she slammed her SUV into a city bus in Los Angeles,
killing at least two people and injuring six others in a prelude to a
second deadly tragedy: the fiery crash of a TV news helicopter that was
covering the collision.
Bailee Lynn Rios, 36, of Simi Valley, was arrested Tuesday night and was
being held at a Los Angeles jail with bail set at $4 million, police
said Wednesday. The case is under review by the district attorney's
office, which will decide whether to file the charges in court or pursue
different ones. Information on a lawyer who could speak on her behalf
was not immediately available.
The helicopter, which was used by NBC and Telemundo, crashed about two
hours after police say Rios drove her 2004 Ford Expedition the wrong way
down a busy avenue, ran a red light and struck a vehicle before hitting
the bus. One passenger was fully ejected from the bus and another was
partially ejected, police said.
Rios’ mother, Cindy Rios, said she was shocked and saddened by the
string of events. She said she had not spoken to Bailee Lynn since her
arrest and had not been contacted by law enforcement.
“The fact that my daughter was involved and was the cause of it is just
extremely disturbing,” Cindy Rios told The Associated Press in a phone
interview Wednesday. “If anything, I’m sorry for the other families ...
My daughter’s alive. People lost their lives.”
The two people who died in the bus crash were identified as Daniel
Castillo, 46, of Los Angeles, and Gage Weida, 31. No city was given for
Weida, but according to his Facebook page, he also lived in LA.
Castillo’s youngest daughter, Johaunna, said her father’s presence made
people feel loved, welcomed and cared for. He is survived by his four
children.
“There are no words that can truly capture how much we will miss him or
the space he leaves behind in our lives,” Johaunna Castillo wrote on a
fundraising page for funeral expenses.
Chopper crash killed a reporter, a pilot and a man on the ground
NBC4 Los Angeles reported that two people aboard the helicopter —
reporter Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw — were killed when the
chopper went down Tuesday in the Chatsworth neighborhood in the San
Fernando Valley.
A person on the ground, identified as 29-year-old Edy Gutierrez Mejia,
died in a parking lot. He was from Guatemala, the country's consulate
confirmed.
The crash happened as news crews were reporting on the collision
involving the SUV that slammed into the bus.
There were no immediate details on what caused the helicopter crash, but
an alarm could be heard sounding inside the helicopter's cockpit as it
lost altitude in the final seconds of video the crew broadcast before
the crash.
Just after the beeping noise starts, a woman’s voice says “uh oh.” The
helicopter moves quickly away from the bus crash site and starts losing
altitude. The woman says “You can’t pull up?” before the video stops as
the chopper nears the ground.
“That video is probably the most important evidence that we have
discovered so far,” National Transportation Safety Board investigator
Fabian Salazar said Wednesday at a news briefing.
Salazar said the sounds were consistent with the helicopter's engine
changing speed, as well as what he said were likely advisory tones for
the pilot. The NTSB said it is also investigating the bus collision.
The helicopter, a Eurocopter AS350, went down near a large storage
facility. At least four cars and two storage containers burned after the
helicopter caught fire.
Anchor and reporters pay tearful tributes to deceased colleagues
Moreno was a familiar voice for NBC4 and Telemundo 52 during the
station’s aerial coverage. She and Marciniw were both employees of Angel
City Air, which operated the chopper for the station.
Moreno, born in Orange County, joined Angel City Air in 2010, the same
year she earned a broadcast journalism and political science degree from
Chapman University. She reported for several news outlets and began
flying with Marciniw in 2023, the NBC4 website said.
Marciniw grew up in Southern California and graduated from Burbank High
School in 1974.
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A person adjusts flowers at a memorial for Eliana Moreno and George
Marciniw who died in a helicopter crash at the site where their
helicopter used to park at Whiteman Airport in Los Angeles,
Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
“I think a lot of us are still trying to process what happened, this
terrible loss,” NBC4 reporter Lauren Coronado told viewers early
Wednesday as she stood near the crash site. A hazmat crew was
cleaning up jet fuel, she said.
In a tribute to Moreno and Marciniw, the newscast referred to them
as “the team in the sky,” saying Moreno often posted videos from her
job and was in awe of the view. Anchor Lynette Romero held a
colleague’s hand and wiped away tears after hearing Moreno’s voice
when one of her posts was played.
Jake Asner, who worked with Moreno in 2022 during a four-month
internship, said she was a driven journalist.
“She could be listening to six different scanners, be talking to the
assignment desk, reporting in English and Spanish and controlling
the camera, all at the same time,” said Asner, who helped start a
memorial near Whiteman Airport, where the chopper was based.
A friend of Marciniw, George Kapoyan, came to lay flowers. Kapoyan
remembered him as “a gentle, humble giant” who took all the time he
needed to conduct preflight safety checks and was very thorough when
communicating with air traffic control.
“You felt very comfortable flying with him,” Kapoyan said.
Expert talks about what may have caused the crash
Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said the alarm sounding in the
helicopter’s final video sounds like the low rotor RPM warning horn
that signals the main rotor is no longer spinning enough to keep the
helicopter in the air.
“It just has all the earmarks of a potential loss of engine power
and a dangerous decrease in the main rotor speed,” said Guzzetti,
who used to investigate crashes for both the NTSB and FAA.
Guzzetti said the pilot appeared to be trying to perform an
emergency maneuver to use the wind to force the rotor to spin again
much like a breeze turns a windmill. Doing that can create a bit of
lift that could help cushion the impact, but Guzzetti said there
would have been little opportunity to do that because the helicopter
had been hovering at a low altitude beforehand.
There are risks to news helicopters particularly in a major city
like Los Angeles where multiple helicopters respond to an incident,
but the pilots all coordinate closely over the radio to ensure they
maintain a safe distance from each other. The industry also shares
best practices to help keep these news flights safe.
“It’s a very unique form of flying. And the community is very good
about lessons learned,” Guzzetti said.
Other crashes involving news helicopters
The station said this is the second aviation tragedy in its history.
In 1977, a KNBC news helicopter crashed when it ran out of fuel
while returning to the station after covering a wildfire in Santa
Barbara, killing the pilot and camera operator.
There have been at least eight fatal crashes involving news
helicopters in the U.S. since 2000, killing 16 people, according to
a review of federal accident records and news accounts.
They include a 2023 crash in a New Jersey forest that killed the
pilot and a photographer aboard a helicopter used by Philadelphia
station WPVI and a 2022 crash beside a Charlotte, North Carolina,
interstate that killed a pilot and meteorologist during a training
flight for WBTV.
A 2007 midair collision in Phoenix of two TV news helicopters that
were covering a police chase led the NTSB to recommend that news
helicopters have at least two people in the cockpit so the pilot can
focus on flying while the reporter focuses on the story.
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