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A news helicopter crashed and killed three people in the Chatsworth neighborhood of Los Angeles on Tuesday evening while the crew was covering a nearby bus collision. The Los Angeles Fire Department confirmed the crash, which took place in a parking lot at or near a self-storage facility in the San Fernando Valley.
NBC Los Angeles Loses Contact with Its Own Crew
The helicopter belonged to NBC Los Angeles. The station confirmed on air that it had lost contact with the crew before the crash. Anchor Colleen Williams delivered the news to viewers in a visibly emotional moment.
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“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, News Chopper 4 went down just before 7 o’clock tonight in Chatsworth,” Williams said. She then paused the broadcast, adding, “We’re going to take a couple of minutes to think about that, to process and to regroup.”
Fatalities and Injuries at the Scene
First responders found three people dead at the crash site. A fourth person suffered injuries and went to a hospital in unknown condition. At least one of those killed appeared to be a pedestrian on the ground at the time of impact.
Fire Captain Branden Silverman confirmed the pedestrian detail while speaking to reporters at the scene. The crash site drew emergency crews shortly after the helicopter went down just before 7 p.m.
Bus Crash Prompted the Original Assignment
The helicopter had been dispatched to cover a separate and serious accident nearby. Earlier that evening, a Los Angeles Metro bus collided with a passenger vehicle on Nordhoff Street. That crash killed two people and injured several others, according to the fire department.
The news crew was in the air covering that incident when their aircraft went down. As a result, what began as coverage of one fatal crash quickly became the site of another. The two tragedies unfolded within a short distance of each other in the same part of the city.
Authorities have not yet released the identities of those killed in the helicopter crash. Investigations into both incidents remain ongoing.
