A Southern California woman faces murder charges after she allegedly drove her vehicle into the side of a Los Angeles municipal bus on Wednesday, prompting a large media presence that included a local television news helicopter that suffered its own fatal crash.
The woman, 36-year-old Bailee Lynn Rios, is accused of causing the crash around rush hour Tuesday after she allegedly ran a red light at an intersection in Chatsworth, a suburb in northwestern Los Angeles. Two people on board the bus were killed and several passengers were injured.
Rios was arrested and booked into Los Angeles County jail; her bail was set at $4 million. In a press release on Wednesday, police said the case will be forwarded to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, which will consider murder charges.
It was not clear if Rios had a reporter.
The crash drew a sizable response from local TV and radio news stations across the Los Angeles area, with more than a dozen reporters covering the story at the scene.
At least five news helicopters were also dispatched to film aerial footage of the crash, according to open source flight data logs reviewed by The Desk. One of those helicopters, an Airbus AS350 used by KNBC-TV (Channel 4), suffered a catastrophic mid-air failure and crashed to the ground.
Two people on board the aircraft were killed. KNBC-TV identified the deceased as reporter Eliana Moreno and pilot George Maciniw. The pair also contributed to KVEA (Channel 52), the area’s Telemundo station. KNBC and KVEA are both owned by Comcast’s NBC Universal.
Moreno and Maciniw were employed by Angel City Air, a company that owns the helicopter in question and which leases access to its aircraft to TV and radio news stations. A spokesperson for Angel City Air did not return a request from The Desk for information about the helicopter. Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the company is cooperating.
A third person, 29-year-old Edy Gutierrez Mejia, was killed near the warehouse where the helicopter crashed on Tuesday. A source familiar with the investigation said Gutierrez Mejia was struck by flying debris from the helicopter after it impacted the ground. He suffered numerous lacerations to his upper body and died at the scene.
Two other people suffered minor physical injuries and were treated at the scene. One other person was transported to a local hospital after experiencing emotional trauma; they were released a short time later.
At a press briefing Wednesday afternoon, NTSB Air Safety Investigator Fabian Salazar said the agency is conducting a preliminary evidence-gathering and fact-finding mission through the weekend. The remains of the helicopter is expected to be moved to a secure facility for examination within a week.
Salazar said video footage captured and transmitted by KNBC-TV’s helicopter moments before it crashed is “probably the most-important evidence that we have discovered so far.” In the footage, a stalled engine and audible sirens can be heard as the helicopter accelerates toward the ground, causing the gimbal-mounted news camera to shake violently.
“What we’re going to do is get a pristine copy of that recording and send it to our recorder’s lab for sound spectrum analysis,” Salazar affirmed.
The NTSB is also interviewing witnesses and working to obtain surveillance camera footage of the crash.
The two main owners of the helicopters used by Los Angeles-area TV stations chose to voluntarily ground their helicopters on Wednesday. On KABC-TV (Channel 7), a news anchor said the decision not to fly was out of consideration for its pilot and crew.
