‘Team in the sky’: NBC4 pays tribute to colleagues killed in news helicopter crash

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. The helicopter, which was used by NBC and Telemundo, crashed about two hours after police say Bailee Lynn 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. NBC4 Los Angeles reported that two people aboard the helicopter who were covering the vehicle crash were killed when the chopper went down Tuesday in the Chatsworth neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley north of downtown. A person on the ground, identified as 29-year-old Edy Gutierrez Mejia, died in a parking lot, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office said.

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Scoop News DeskLos Angeles, California · Published Wednesday, September 16, 2026 at 7:11 PM UTCUpdated Thursday, September 17, 2026 at 11:26 PM UTC

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Air Force officer Francis Gary Powers, had been in the news years earlier when he was shot down and captured while flying a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union for the CIA, an ordeal portrayed in the movie “Bridge of Spies.” 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. 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.

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