NBC 4 reporter Robert Kovacik broke down live on air after realizing a helicopter that crashed in Los Angeles carried his own colleagues.
Kovacik, a journalist with the Los Angeles NBC affiliate, had been reporting on a bus crash in the Chatsworth neighborhood last Tuesday evening when the station’s news chopper plummeted into a parking lot around 7 p.m. Local time. Firefighters ordered him to clear the area as thick smoke rose from the wreckage nearby, and network vans scrambled to evacuate.
At first, Kovacik did not know the aircraft belonged to his own station. “We don’t know where the chopper is from, we don’t know if it even is a chopper, if it’s a news chopper, we are just looking right now,” he said on the live broadcast.
The truth reached him moments later. “Dude that’s my crew in there, that is my own crew,” Kovacik pleaded with a police officer at the scene, according to the Mail Online. The officer tried to move him to safety: “We are gonna get them evacuated, this isn’t safe.”
The crash killed three people: NBC 4 photo journalist Eliana Moreno, pilot George Marciniw, and an unnamed pedestrian who was on the ground. Two additional victims were hospitalized, Fire Battalion Chief Rico A. Gross announced at a subsequent news conference. Their conditions have not been disclosed.
Back at the NBC 4 studio, anchor Colleen Williams was delivering live coverage when confirmation arrived that the fallen aircraft was News Chopper 4. “We can now confirm that the chopper that went down in Chatsworth tonight, about two hours ago, was in fact news chopper four,” she told viewers.
Williams continued, her voice measured as she relayed the station’s worst fears realized: “We’ve been telling you that we’ve been piecing it together here, we knew it was a news chopper and we knew we’d lost contact with our people out there, and we’ve just received the confirmation that in fact news chopper four went down just before seven o’clock tonight in Chatsworth.”
Lynette Romero, host of NBC LA’s morning newscast, appeared on Wednesday’s Today show to speak about the loss of her colleagues. “They were both doing what they loved so much and for me, that’s comfort in knowing how happy they were,” she said. “They loved breaking news, and they loved being in News Chopper 4.”
NBC Los Angeles and Telemundo 52, its Spanish-language sister station, released a joint statement the day after the crash. “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,” the stations said. “We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of those who lost their lives.”
The National Transport Safety Board has opened an investigation into what caused the helicopter to fall from the sky. Officials have not yet released preliminary findings about mechanical failure, weather conditions, or other potential factors in the deadly crash.
Kovacik had arrived at the bus crash scene expecting to file a routine report on a traffic incident. Instead, he found himself broadcasting the final moments of his own crew’s lives, his professional composure collapsing into raw grief as the reality became unmistakable.
The collision between a working journalist’s detachment and personal devastation played out in real time, with viewers witnessing Kovacik’s dawning horror before he was pulled from the scene for his own safety.
The NTSB investigation is ongoing.