A devastating video captures the moment NBC journalist Robert Kovacik watched a helicopter crash in Los Angeles, initially unaware that members of his own station’s crew were on board.
Kovacik, a reporter for NBC 4, was covering a separate bus crash in LA’s Chatsworth area on Tuesday night when the helicopter came down in a parking lot nearby.
As flames consumed the aircraft, Kovacik and his crew hurried toward the scene. At the time, he did not know his colleagues, Eliana Moreno and George Marciniw, were inside the downed chopper.
Thick, dark smoke rose above the crash site while firefighters repeatedly urged the NBC reporter to keep his distance from the dangerous area.
“Trust me, I am putting my own life in my own hands,” Kovacik pleaded with emergency responders.
His distress intensified once he learned the aircraft involved was an NBC helicopter.
“Dude, that’s my crew in there, that is my own crew,” Kovacik said in the emotional footage.
A police officer assured him: “We are gonna get them evacuated. This isn’t safe.”
NBC 4 reporter Robert Kovacik ran toward the scene after a helicopter carrying his colleagues crashed in Los Angeles’ Chatsworth neighborhood on Tuesday night.
Kovacik was reporting from a Los Angeles street when he witnessed the fatal helicopter crash, not realizing his own NBC crew members were aboard.
Eliana Moreno, 38, and pilot George Marciniw, 70, were identified as the two people on board the aircraft when it went down while covering a fatal bus collision
Horrific scenes unfolded at the crash site at the intersection of Northoff Street and DeSoto Avenue in Chatsworth with flames rising from the wreck and thick black smoke billowing toward the sky
Kovacik was on-air covering the bus crash when his colleagues in the NBC 4 studio interrupted his report, instructing him to move towards the billowing smoke.
‘Robert, we need you to move,’ an anchor said, interrupting his report. ‘Robert, we’re going to need you to move towards that smoke and get closer to that scene immediately.
‘We’re still working to get information on exactly what happened but we’re going to ask right now, as best you can, that you and your crew move in that direction immediately.’
The broadcast cut back to the studio as Kovacik made his way to the scene.
‘We understand there may be an aircraft down. We don’t have any more specific information than that,’ anchor Colleen Williams said.
‘Robert is driving in the direction. We did see a huge plume of black smoke in the area.’
When Kovacik’s crew resumed their feed, NBC4 viewers saw the reporter begging with law enforcement to let him on the scene.
‘We know it’s something bad judging from the smoke,’ Williams said.
MORE STORY: Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s Daughter Faith Stuns in New Photos
Kovacik turned back toward the camera to resume his report, telling his colleagues that the LAPD would soon be evacuating them from the area.
Describing the scene, he shared how there was a ‘fire that is spreading.’
That’s when he spotted Fox 11 reporter Ed Laskos and asked ‘What are you hearing?’
Laskos put his arms around Kovacik and said: ‘It’s a chopper, a media chopper.’
‘It’s a chopper?’ Kovacik repeated back to him.
‘Yes, it’s a media chopper,’ Laskos said.
‘Are you ok? It’s not you guys, is it?’ Kovacik questioned, as a burst of flames exploded behind him.
A female reporter was ran past the cameras in tears.
Kovacik turned back to the cameras and said, ‘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.’
Moreno, 38, and Marciniw, 70, were on board the NBC helicopter when it crashed near the scene of a deadly bus collision in Los Angeles just before 7pm Tuesday.
The NewsChopper4 was flying over the area between two warehouses at the intersection of Nordhoff Street and DeSoto Avenue, near where an SUV crashed into a bus earlier in the night, when it suddenly lost altitude and plunged to the ground.
Two people were killed in the bus crash, while six others were left injured, some of whom were in critical condition.
The chopper appeared to have crashed next to two shipping containers and several vehicles that were parked in the area, causing a massive blaze that threatened four vehicles nearby.
Moreno was a veteran aerial reporter for NBC4 Los Angeles and Telemundo, who had been flying in news choppers since 2010 – covering police pursuits, wildfires, traffic and major local events.
She began her career in the air after graduating from Chapman University in 2010, where she studied broadcast journalism and political science.
Moreno had worked at KCAL 9 and KCBS 2 before joining NBC and flying aboard NewsChopper4 around 2018 or 2019.
Marciniw was an experienced pilot who had logged more than 14,000 hours in the helicopter.
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.