Los Angeles is mourning tonight after an NBC4 news helicopter went down in Chatsworth while covering what should have been a routine breaking-news assignment. Three people are dead. A fourth is in hospital. And the name on everyone’s timeline is Eliana Moreno, the station’s longtime aerial reporter, whose voice Angelenos have heard from “Newschopper 4” for the better part of a decade.
Here is what’s actually known so far, and who Eliana Moreno is.
What Happened in Chatsworth
The Los Angeles Fire Department says the crash was called in at 6:57 p.m. on Tuesday, September 15, at 9151 North Mason Avenue in Chatsworth, a San Fernando Valley neighborhood. The helicopter, operated for NBC4 and its sister station Telemundo 52, had been in the air covering a separate, already-fatal story: a collision between an SUV and a Metro bus nearby that had left two people dead and several more injured. Multiple news helicopters were working the scene at the same time.
Viewers watching the live feed saw the aircraft begin a slow, uneven descent. Then the signal simply cut out. Anchors in the studio went quiet for a moment, then told viewers they were having trouble reaching their colleagues in the sky. That silence turned out to be the worst kind of foreshadowing.
Firefighters arrived to find the wreckage jammed between two commercial buildings, both it and several nearby vehicles on fire. LAFD says three people were pronounced dead at the scene; a fourth was taken to a hospital in unknown condition. One of the three killed may have been a pedestrian caught in a parking lot below, according to an early LAFD update, though that detail hasn’t been nailed down publicly.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA are now handling the investigation, which is standard for any civil aircraft crash in the U.S. Nobody has said, even preliminarily, what caused the helicopter to go down. That process typically takes months, sometimes over a year, before a final cause is published.
NBC4 and Telemundo 52 released a short statement Tuesday night: “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. We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of those who lost their lives.” Notably, the station stopped short of naming anyone. As of this writing, neither NBC4 nor the LAFD has officially confirmed the identities of those killed.
So Who Is Eliana Moreno?
That hasn’t stopped her name from spreading across social media, and several outlets are reporting, based on unofficial sources, that Moreno and pilot George Marciniw were aboard. Treat that as unconfirmed until the station or the coroner’s office says otherwise, but here’s who Eliana Moreno is, because her name has been a fixture of LA local news for years regardless of how this particular story ends.
Moreno has worked as an aerial photojournalist and reporter for KNBC (NBC4) and Telemundo 52, flying in what the station calls Newschopper 4. She’s a Chapman University graduate and, by her own social media bio, grew up in Orange County; she’s described herself online as “from the OC,” with roots on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Her Instagram, @eli_in_the_heli, leans into the job with a mix of pride and humor: helicopter emoji, dog-mom updates, family shoutouts.
If you’ve watched LA local news at any point in the last several years, you’ve probably seen her work without necessarily clocking the name. She’s the voice narrating high-speed pursuits down the 405, wildfire smoke rolling over the hills, search-and-rescue operations in the Hollywood Hills, and the aftermath of crashes just like the one she may have been covering when the crash happened. In one clip from a few years back, she talked a rescued hiker’s dog through a happy ending after a technical rescue crew pulled the animal to safety, a small, human moment that’s been recirculating online tonight for obvious reasons.
Before her current run at NBC4 and Telemundo 52, Moreno cut her teeth at smaller outlets covering Orange County community stories, everything from local sports segments to neighborhood features, the kind of unglamorous, dues-paying beat reporting most aerial journalists work through before they ever get near a helicopter.
Aerial news reporting is one of those jobs people rarely think about until something goes wrong. It means being airborne for hours during breaking events, narrating live with zero script, and trusting a pilot you’ve likely flown with hundreds of times before. It is also, statistically, one of the more dangerous corners of TV journalism; small aircraft, tight urban airspace, and long shifts chasing fast-moving stories are not a forgiving combination.
Until the LAFD, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner, or NBC4 itself confirms identities, anything circulating about who exactly was on board remains secondhand. Families deserve the dignity of an official notification before names go wide, and reputable outlets are generally holding that line for now. NBC4’s own coverage has focused on the fact of the crash and its aftermath rather than naming victims.
What’s certain is that a station and a city are grieving a colleague many of them grew up watching. Eliana Moreno spent years turning up at the worst moments in other people’s lives so the rest of us could understand what happened. Tonight, for the first time, the story is about the helicopter itself.
This is a developing story. Details including the identities of those killed, the condition of the survivor, and the cause of the crash may change as the NTSB investigation proceeds and as NBC4 and the LAFD release further information.
