By The American Tribune | Created at 2026-09-18 10:26:13 | Updated at 2026-09-18 12:37:27
2 hours ago
NBC4 anchor Colleen Williams struggled to maintain her composure as she confirmed live on the air that her station’s own news helicopter had crashed while covering a deadly collision in Los Angeles. The station had spent roughly two hours reporting on the helicopter wreck while its newsroom worked to determine whether the aircraft was NewsChopper4. Williams finally delivered the confirmation viewers and her colleagues had feared. The crash killed the station’s aerial reporter and pilot, along with a man on the ground.
The helicopter went down shortly before 7 p.m. on Tuesday, September 15th, in the Chatsworth neighborhood of Los Angeles. NewsChopper4 had been covering an earlier collision between an SUV and a Metro bus that killed two people and injured several others. Multiple news helicopters were above the scene when the NBC4 newsroom suddenly lost contact with its crew. The station continued covering the unfolding disaster while trying to determine whose aircraft had crashed.
“We can now confirm that the chopper that went down in Chatsworth tonight, about two hours ago, was in fact NewsChopper4,” Williams told viewers. “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’ve just received the confirmation that, in fact, NewsChopper4 went down just before 7 o’clock tonight in Chatsworth.”
Williams paused repeatedly as she delivered the confirmation, her voice breaking under the weight of the news. “And we are going to take a couple of minutes to think about that, to process, and to regroup,” she said before NBC4 temporarily ended its live coverage. The station returned to the air approximately 40 minutes later, according to the Los Angeles Times. Williams told viewers, “Our colleagues lost their lives this evening; they were in NewsChopper4.”
The two people aboard the helicopter were aerial reporter Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw, both employees of Angel City Air, which owned and operated the aircraft. Moreno had worked in Southern California aerial news since 2010 and provided reports for NBC4 and Telemundo 52. Marciniw was an experienced pilot and flight instructor who had spent decades flying helicopters. The pair began flying together in 2023 and had covered police pursuits, wildfires, and other major stories across the region.
The helicopter crashed between two commercial buildings in the 9100 block of North Mason Avenue, according to NBC Los Angeles. The impact sparked a fire that damaged four vehicles and two storage containers. Moreno and Marciniw were killed, along with 29-year-old Edy Fernando Gutiérrez Mejia, who was on the ground. Two other people were transported to a hospital, and their conditions weren’t immediately released.
Watch Williams deliver the heartbreaking confirmation here:
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The National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation into the crash and asked witnesses to provide any recordings of the helicopter’s final moments. Investigator-in-charge Fabian Salazar said video captured during the crew’s live coverage could become the most important evidence available to investigators. Salazar said he was not aware of a data recorder aboard the aircraft, although investigators had not finished searching through the wreckage. A preliminary report is expected within 30 days, while a final determination could take months or years.
NBC4 and Telemundo 52 said they were “deeply saddened” by the fatal crash and offered condolences to the victims’ relatives, friends, and colleagues. When Williams returned to the air, she explained that the crew had been preparing to report on the bus collision when station employees saw a large plume of smoke rising only a few blocks away. “Just a couple blocks away, our helicopter went down, it crashed,” Williams said. “One person in the parking lot was killed, and two people on board the chopper also lost their lives. It’s just so difficult to comprehend.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.
