A California woman was allegedly driving under the influence when she sped down the wrong side of the road, ran a red light and plowed her SUV into a Los Angeles metro bus on Tuesday, killing two passengers, prosecutors say, in a tragedy compounded when a news helicopter covering the crash plummeted from the sky, killing three.
Bailee Lynn Rios, ۳۶, has been charged with two counts of murder over the deaths of the two people on the bus, identified as Daniel Castillo, ۴۶, and Gage Weida, ۳۱. Rios was being held on $۴.۱m bail and is set to be arraigned on ۱۸ September. Online court records did not list a lawyer who might speak on her behalf, and the public defender’s office did not immediately return a message about whether it was representing her.
The wake of Tuesday’s deadly bus crash took a turn for the worse in the hours after, when a local news helicopter responding to the scene crashed to the ground in a fiery ball, killing two individuals onboard: pilot George Marciniw and reporter Eliana Moreno. A pedestrian on the ground, ۲۹-year-old Edy Gutierrez Mejia, also died in the crash.
Reached Wednesday, Rios’s mother, Cindy, said she was shocked and saddened by the string of events. She said she had not spoken to her daughter since her arrest and had not been contacted by law enforcement. She could not immediately be reached on Thursday for additional comment.
Castillo left behind four children. “We are still trying to process the unimaginable reality that he is no longer with us,” his youngest daughter, Johaunna, wrote on a fundraising page for funeral expenses.
Weida’s family planned to visit him for his ۳۲nd birthday, his father told CBS LA. “Unfortunately, we’re still heading out there, but for all the wrong reasons,” said Jeffrey Weida.
“The deadly and destructive consequences of her actions will be felt for years to come,” Los Angeles county district attorney Nathan Hochman said in a statement.
Stephanie Wiggins, chief executive of the Los Angeles metro, extended her sympathies to the bus crash’s victims and their families.
“We are grateful to the first responders who rushed to the scene and to the law enforcement investigators and prosecutors working to establish the facts and pursue justice,” she said in a statement.
A vigil was planned Thursday evening to honor the victims of both crashes.
There were no immediate details on what caused the helicopter to go down, but investigators said significant clues could come from the last seconds of video the crew broadcast. In it, an alarm could be heard inside the helicopter’s cockpit as it lost altitude.
National Transportation Safety Board investigator Fabian Salazar said on Wednesday the video was “probably the most important evidence that we have discovered so far”.
In the video, after the beeping 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.
Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said the alarm suggested a potential loss of engine power and a dangerous decrease in the main rotor speed. He said the pilot appeared to be trying to perform an emergency maneuver to use the wind to force the rotor to spin again.
The NTSB is also investigating the bus collision.
Moreno and Marciniw worked for Angel City Air, a helicopter contractor, and provided aerial coverage for NBC۴ and Telemundo ۵۲.
Moreno, born in Orange county, joined Angel City Air in ۲۰۱۰, 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 ۲۰۲۳, NBC۴ said.
Marciniw grew up in southern California and graduated from Burbank high school in ۱۹۷۴.
There have been at least eight fatal crashes involving news helicopters in the US since ۲۰۰۰, killing ۱۶ people, according to a review of federal accident records and news accounts.
