LOS ANGELES — An SUV driver was under the influence of drugs when she swerved into the wrong lane, blew a red light and slammed into a Los Angeles city bus, killing two riders, prosecutors said Thursday as they charged her with murder. It was a tragedy compounded by the subsequent fatal crash of a TV news helicopter that had been covering the collision. Bailee Lynn Rios was speeding and impaired when she drove her 2004 Ford Expedition the wrong way down a busy avenue and struck a vehicle before plowing into a city bus on Tuesday, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman told a news conference. Rios, 36, faces two charges of second-degree murder in the deaths of the two people on the bus, identified as Daniel Castillo, 46, and Gage Weida, 31. Castillo left four children. “There are no words that can truly capture how much we will miss him or the space he leaves behind in our lives,” Castillo’s youngest daughter, Johaunna, wrote on a fundraising page for funeral expenses. Rios was being held on US$4.1 million bail and is scheduled to appear in court Friday. Online court records did not list a lawyer who might speak on her behalf, and the public defender’s office said it had not been appointed to represent her. Reached Wednesday, her mother Cindy Rios said she was shocked and saddened by the string of events. She said she had not spoken to Bailee Lynn Rios since her arrest and had not been contacted by law enforcement. She could not immediately be reached Thursday for additional comment. The news helicopter crash killed both people on board, pilot George Marciniw and reporter Eliana Moreno, and a man on the ground, Edy Gutierrez Mejia. At least four cars and two storage containers burned after the helicopter caught fire. A vigil was planned Thursday evening to honour the victims of both crashes. There were no immediate details on what caused the helicopter to go down, but investigators said significant clues could come from the last seconds of video the crew broadcast. In it, an alarm could be heard inside the helicopter’s cockpit as it lost altitude. U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigator Fabian Salazar said Wednesday that the video is “probably the most important evidence that we have discovered so far.” Just after the beeping starts, a woman’s voice says “uh oh.” The helicopter moves quickly away from the bus crash site and starts losing altitude. The woman says “You can’t pull up?” before the video stops as the chopper nears the ground. Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said the alarm suggests a potential loss of engine power and a dangerous decrease in the main rotor speed. He said the pilot appeared to be trying to perform an emergency maneuver to use the wind to force the rotor to spin again. The NTSB is also investigating the bus collision. Moreno and Marciniw both worked for Angel City Air, a helicopter contractor, and provided aerial coverage for NBC4 and Telemundo 52. Moreno, born in Orange County, joined Angel City Air in 2010, the same year she earned a broadcast journalism and political science degree from Chapman University. She reported for several news outlets and began flying with Marciniw in 2023, NBC4 said. Marciniw grew up in Southern California and graduated from Burbank High School in 1974. There have been at least eight fatal crashes involving news helicopters in the U.S. since 2000, killing 16 people, according to a review of federal accident records and news accounts. The Associated Press
