Eliana Moreno once described her job as “the best job in the world.” Flying above Los Angeles in NewsChopper 4, covering brush fires, police pursuits, and freeway pileups unfolding beneath her. On Tuesday night, that helicopter went down in the Chatsworth neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley while she was covering a fatal Metro bus collision. Moreno, 38, was killed alongside pilot George Marciniw, according to NBC Los Angeles and NBC News. A pedestrian on the ground, later identified by the coroner’s office as 29-year-old Edy Gutierrez Mejia, also died.

For the bilingual audiences of NBC4 and Telemundo 52, Moreno’s voice was a fixture in two languages, guiding them through the worst days in Los Angeles from a thousand feet up. Her death has left a newsroom, a fiancé, and a city trying to process how someone so full of momentum could be gone so suddenly.

From Orange County to NewsChopper 4

Eliana Moreno was born in Orange County, a Tustin native, and she had aspired to be a television news reporter since she was 11 years old. She graduated from Chapman University in 2010 with degrees in broadcast journalism and political science. That same year, she joined the helicopter team at Angel City Air, the aerial production company that has operated NewsChopper 4 for NBC4 and Telemundo 52.

Before becoming a familiar presence in NewsChopper 4’s cockpit, Moreno worked for KCAL 9 and KCBS 2, honing the craft of narrating fast-moving scenes in real time from the air. She joined NBC and began flying aboard NewsChopper 4 around 2018 or 2019, reporting predominantly on police pursuits, brush fires, and traffic collisions. On Instagram, she went by the handle eli_in_the_heli, or “Eli in the Heli,” as she introduced herself to followers.

Her work earned recognition well beyond her own station. In 2022, her aerial coverage of a deadly crash in Windsor Hills won a Radio Television Digital News Association award, according to Yahoo News, and she shared a photo online showing off the honor alongside Robert Rodriguez, the pilot flying the helicopter that day.

Eliana Moreno, The Bilingual Voice of Angelenos

What set Moreno apart, according to those who worked alongside her, was her fluency in switching between English and Spanish audiences without missing a beat, along with a fearlessness in the air that had already earned her industry recognition. Lynette Romero, a co-anchor of NBC Los Angeles’s morning broadcast, described that skill in an interview on TODAY on Sept. 16.

“She was our bilingual reporter, so she would be in NewsChopper 4 reporting for both NBC 4 and for Telemundo 52, and she would go back and forth between two languages, English and Spanish, like that, with precision, and that is a real art and talent and skill, and she did it just flawlessly,” Romero said.

Telemundo, in a statement posted online after her death was confirmed, called her “without a doubt” the best airborne reporter in Los Angeles. “Eliana Moreno was a wonderful human being,” the network said. “Her professionalism was impressive.” The station described her as someone who was “on top of everything” and a “source of comfort” to colleagues, according to the statement shared on Instagram.

Romero also remembered the day NBC Los Angeles staff visited Whiteman Airport in Pacoima to see NewsChopper 4 up close. “She was so proud to show us her office,” Romero said. “And she just opened the doors and said, ‘Get inside, take a picture,’ and, ‘These are my cameras, and this is what I do, and this is how I zoom in on the flames.’” Romero called her colleague “teeny-tiny” but said she carried “the biggest heart and enthusiasm that was really contagious.”

Eliana Moreno’s Life Beyond the Sky

Moreno’s world was not limited to the cockpit. On Oct. 28, 2025, she announced her engagement to Robert Barrientos, sharing the news on social media as friends and family celebrated the couple, according to Yahoo News. Romero confirmed to TODAY that Moreno was engaged to be married at the time of her death.

She also carried her competitive drive off the job. Moreno set a New Year’s resolution to run just one mile by the end of 2026 while living with asthma, and by May she had completed the Orange County half marathon in under two hours alongside Barrientos, Yahoo News reported. “The first week of January, I decided to start trying to run my one mile,” she said. “I did it on my first try, and even though I felt like I was going to die, I felt like I could do more.” She wrote afterward on Instagram, “I surpassed everything I thought I could ever do, so let’s see what I do next.”

Romero remembered her as coming from a big family that was “so proud of her” for reporting the news in her own hometown, and said Moreno was an animal lover who kept dogs and chickens.

The Chatsworth Helicopter Crash

Tuesday’s tragedy began with a separate collision. According to NBC Los Angeles and NBC News, an SUV struck a Los Angeles Metro bus on Nordhoff Street in Chatsworth around 5:03 p.m., killing two people and injuring six others. The SUV’s driver was expected to be arrested on suspicion of murder, NBC Los Angeles reported. Multiple television news helicopters, including NewsChopper 4, converged on the area to cover the collision, NBC Los Angeles said.

Just before 7 p.m., NewsChopper 4 went down in a parking lot between two commercial buildings near a self-storage facility, the Los Angeles Fire Department said. The crash sparked a fire that spread to four vehicles and two storage containers, and more than 70 firefighters responded, the department told the BBC.

Witnesses said they watched the helicopter struggle before it fell.

“As we were driving, I looked over to my left,” witness Zareh Sevanesian told NBC News. “I saw the helicopter — something didn’t look right. And I told my wife, ‘That helicopter is not flying right.’” He said he watched it lose altitude gradually before pulling over near the crash as fire roared. “It was one of the most violent fires I had ever seen,” he recalled.

The exact cause of the crash has not been determined. Veteran pilot Zoey Tur reviewed footage that circulated online and told followers on X that the audio suggested a low rotor RPM warning and the sound of the engine losing power, speculating that the aircraft had suffered an engine failure. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are leading the investigation, and the NTSB confirmed it is examining the crash of a Eurocopter AS 350 B2 helicopter in Chatsworth, with investigators expected on scene the following morning, according to NBC News.

Two other people were taken to the hospital, Fire Battalion Chief Rico Gross said at a late-night news conference, according to NBC News, though their conditions were not immediately available.

A City, and a Newsroom, in Mourning

The grief spread quickly beyond NBC4’s own hallways. Mike Rogers, an assignment editor at CBS Los Angeles, told the BBC that the region’s aerial news community is tightly knit. “That helicopter community is a small group of people, and it’s just devastating to know that this has happened to one of those people, to our friends and our colleagues at NBC4,” Rogers said.

On air Tuesday night, NBC4 anchor Colleen Williams told viewers the station had lost its own helicopter and crew. “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,” she said on air, according to NBC News. “We’re going to take a couple of minutes to think about that, to process and to regroup,” she added, her voice breaking as she spoke.

Reporter Robert Kovacik, who had worked at NBC since 2004 and alongside Moreno and Marciniw for years, was on the ground covering the same story when he learned what had happened. Video captured him wiping away tears before sitting in a police car with an officer, according to the New York Post. Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Jamie Moore and Mayor Karen Bass were photographed consoling him at the scene.

Bass called it “a very, very, very tragic day in Los Angeles.”

She said the city had lost “five Angelenos” between the bus collision and the helicopter crash, adding that “our focus is with the victims, their families, and loved ones, and supporting those who responded to this tragedy,” according to NBC Los Angeles. California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X that “our hearts are with the victims and families of tonight’s devastating Metro bus and helicopter crashes in Chatsworth, and with the entire NBC4 family.”

NBC4 and Telemundo 52 released a joint statement mourning both Moreno and Marciniw. “We are deeply saddened to share that a helicopter providing aerial news coverage for NBC4 and Telemundo 52 was involved in a fatal accident in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening,” the statement read. “We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of those who lost their lives.”

George Marciniw, the Pilot Beside Her

Marciniw, who grew up in Southern California and graduated from Burbank High School in 1974, brought more than three decades of flight experience into the cockpit, according to NBC News. He and Moreno had been flying together since 2023, logging, as the New York Post reported, citing NBC, hundreds of hours in the air together. On his own Instagram, he described himself simply as a news pilot and often posted sunset photos over Los Angeles, some of which he credited to Moreno, according to TODAY.

Romero, reflecting on both colleagues, said their final flight matched how they lived. “They were both doing what they loved so much, and for me, that’s comfort in knowing how happy they were,” she told TODAY. “They loved breaking news, and they loved being in NewsChopper 4.”

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