Johan Moreno has warned that his family is not collecting donations after his sister’s death.
Eliana Moreno’s brother, Johan Moreno of Brooklyn, posted on X Wednesday night that any online fundraising pages were unauthorized. The warning came one day after the NBC reporter, 38, was killed in a helicopter crash in Los Angeles while covering a deadly bus collision in Chatsworth.
“At this time, our family and her fiancé are not collecting monetary donations,” he wrote on the platform. “Any online donation pages are not endorsed by our family. Thank you for your well wishes and understanding.”
Johan Moreno, a writer, also shared a throwback photograph of his sister working inside NewsChopper 4, the Eurocopter AS350 that went down. He added a separate message of grief alongside the image.
“RIP sis, I will love you to the end of time,” he wrote. “My family and I just went through the worst day of our lives. We appreciate all the support and love.”
The crash killed three people total. Pilot George Marciniw also died aboard the helicopter, along with Guatemalan national Edy Gutierrez Mejia, 29, who was on the ground when the aircraft came down.
Tributes have emerged across Los Angeles for the slain journalist. Mourners left flowers at a makeshift memorial erected at Whiteman Airport in Pacoima, the base from which NewsChopper 4 operated.
“She was just so wildly good at what she did,” LA aerial photographer Jake Asner, who created the memorial, told the Los Angeles Daily News. “She had the scanners on, she was talking to … assignment desks … and controlling the camera. …. She did it like it was a piece of cake.”
Asner said he chose the airport for the memorial because it was a place “she loved.”
NBC Los Angeles reporter Jonathan Gonzalez also praised Moreno’s abilities, calling her “damn good” at her work and “one of a kind,”.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the crash and expects to release a preliminary report within 30 days. Investigators plan to gather surveillance footage from nearby buildings and review the helicopter’s logbooks as part of their examination.
The aircraft’s charred wreckage is being examined and will be transferred to a secure facility for further analysis. The final report could take up to 18 months to complete.
Fabian Salazar, the NTSB investigator-in-charge, identified the livestream video documenting the helicopter’s final moments as critical evidence. The footage shows the camera zooming out before alarms sound and the helicopter begins its descent. Moreno is heard asking, “You can’t pull up?” before the video cuts out, apparently at the moment of impact.
Salazar called the recording “probably the most important evidence” in determining what went wrong.
The helicopter had been covering a bus collision in Chatsworth when it crashed Tuesday. The livestream captured the aircraft’s final communications and mechanical warnings before the fatal plunge.