NTSB Reviews Final Audio in 3-Death NBC4 Helicopter Crash as Experts Point to Engine Failure
Updated
Updated · Los Angeles Times · Sep 16
NTSB Reviews Final Audio in 3-Death NBC4 Helicopter Crash as Experts Point to Engine Failure
3 articles · Updated · Los Angeles Times · Sep 16
Summary
Investigators said audio from NBC4’s live broadcast is the key evidence in the Chatsworth helicopter crash that killed reporter Eliana Moreno, pilot George Marciniw and bystander Edy Gutierrez Mejia.
The recording captures the engine winding down, a warning horn and Moreno asking, “You can’t pull up?” before the feed cuts out, prompting NTSB and FAA review of wreckage, logs, weather and pilot training.
Aviation experts told the Los Angeles Times the 22-year-old Eurocopter AS350 B2 may have suffered a mechanical failure; they said its low-altitude hover left little chance to execute autorotation in the helicopter’s “dead man’s curve.”
The helicopter crashed around 7 p.m. between commercial buildings on Mason Avenue while covering a Metro bus collision that had already killed two people, bringing the day’s death toll across both disasters to five.
Police separately arrested 36-year-old Bailee Lynn Rios on suspicion of murder in the earlier bus crash, underscoring how one traffic collision set off the chain of events that ended in the newsroom tragedy.