An NBC 4 reporter witnessed an NBC helicopter crash in Los Angeles without initially knowing that his own colleagues were on board the aircraft.
Robert Kovacik had been reporting on a fatal bus collision in the Chatsworth neighbourhood on Tuesday night when the helicopter came down in a parking area near the scene.
As flames rose from the wreckage and thick smoke filled the sky, Kovacik moved towards the crash with his crew. Firefighters and police officers repeatedly warned him to stay away from the area.
“Trust me I am putting my own life in my own hands,” Kovacik told first responders as he tried to get closer.
He then realised the aircraft was the NBC helicopter. “Dude that’s my crew in there, that is my own crew,” he said.
An officer replied: “We are gonna get them evacuated this isn’t safe.”
NBC helicopter crash in Los Angeles
The NewsChopper4 had been flying over the area between two warehouses at the intersection of Nordhoff Street and DeSoto Avenue when it lost altitude and plunged to the ground shortly before 7pm.
Eliana Moreno, 38, and pilot George Marciniw, 70, were identified as the two people on board. The crash caused a major fire next to shipping containers and parked vehicles, with flames threatening four nearby vehicles.
Kovacik had been live on air when colleagues in the NBC 4 studio interrupted his report and told him to move towards the smoke.
“Robert, we need you to move,” one anchor said. “Robert, we’re going to need you to move towards that smoke and get closer to that scene immediately.”
The broadcast then returned to the studio as Kovacik drove towards the crash site. Anchor Colleen Williams told viewers: “We understand there may be an aircraft down. We don’t have any more specific information than that.”
When Kovacik’s live feed resumed, he could be seen appealing to law enforcement officers to let him through. He later told viewers that police were preparing to evacuate them, while describing a fire that was spreading.
Fox 11 reporter Ed Laskos then approached Kovacik and put his arms around him. “It’s a chopper, a media chopper,” he said.
The helicopter had been covering the same incident in which an SUV crashed into a bus. Two people were killed in the bus collision and six others were injured, some critically.
Moreno was an aerial reporter for NBC4 Los Angeles and Telemundo and had worked in news helicopters since 2010, covering police pursuits, wildfires, traffic and major local events.
She had previously worked at KCAL 9 and KCBS 2 before joining NBC and flying aboard NewsChopper4 around 2018 or 2019.
Marciniw was an experienced helicopter pilot who had logged more than 14,000 hours in the aircraft.
