Reporter Fights Back Tears at Scene of Chopper Crash That Killed Co-Workers

NBC 4 A news reporter was fighting back tears live on air as he reported on a helicopter crash that killed his co-workers.

Photojournalist Eliana Moreno and chopper pilot George Marciniw were named as two of the three victims who died when their NBC 4 aircraft went down in Chatsworth, Los Angeles, on Tuesday.

They had been reporting on a bus crash that had killed two people just blocks away when the studio lost contact with them, and it fell to the rest of the station’s team—including longtime reporter Robert Kovacik—to cover the death of their friends in real time.

He was on the ground as news teams scrambled for information about which network’s helicopter had gone down, as emergency services worked to contain the blaze that had broken out in an industrial lot after the crash.

The impact had also smashed a car and a storage container.

Veteran reporter Kovacik fought back tears as he spoke to the studio after the incident, while anchors Colleen Williams and Carolyn Johnson discussed the moments when he had been part of the melee, trying to figure out what had happened.

“All of our colleagues didn’t know at first, and it is remarkable how people come together,” he said, night having fallen behind him.

“You know, in our business, there’s a police tape and media’s on one side of the police tape and the first responders are on the other side of the police tape.

You never want to be on that side of the police tape.

And tonight, they asked me to cross that police tape and talk to them.

That was tough.

That was tough.” In other footage, he was pictured on the other side of that tape, sitting in the front seat of an LAPD squad car with tears in his eyes.

In the first moments after the crash, Kovacik was on the ground, reporting live, speaking to other reporters and trying to determine whether it had been a news helicopter and, if so, which station’s.

“We don’t know where the chopper is from,” he said from the scene.