Chopper went down near earlier SUV-bus collision that killed at least two
An NBC4 Los Angeles news helicopter crashed in the Chatsworth neighborhood of Los Angeles shortly before 7 p.m., the Los Angeles Fire Department said. The aircraft came down near a one-story commercial building in the San Fernando Valley and burst into flames, killing at least three people and igniting fires that destroyed at least four cars and two storage containers on the ground. More than 50 firefighters responded, and the ground fires were quickly extinguished.
News crews had been in Chatsworth earlier in the day to cover a separate fatal collision involving a city bus. An NBC4 Los Angeles anchor confirmed during a live broadcast that the station’s helicopter had gone down.
“We’re trying to determine how many patients were inside the helicopter,” Capt. Branden Silverman, a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson, said during a news conference. Silverman described the aircraft as “pretty well destroyed” and said officials would be sorting through the rubble to determine how many victims had been on board.
At least one person killed in the helicopter crash was outside in the parking lot next to the commercial building, Silverman said. It was unclear whether the other two people killed were on the ground or inside the aircraft, he said. One additional person was taken to the hospital, but their condition was not immediately clear.
The helicopter crash occurred about two hours after and roughly 1.5 miles from the earlier bus collision in Chatsworth, the fire department said. In that incident, an SUV struck the middle of a city bus, killing at least two people and injuring six others. Photographs and videos posted online showed half of the SUV lodged into the side of an MTA bus.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration said they would investigate the cause of the helicopter crash.