2 dead, 6 hospitalized after SUV crashes into Metro bus in Chatsworth; driver arrested

Two men were killed and six other people were injured when an SUV crashed into a Metro bus in Chatsworth Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 15, authorities said.

The driver of the SUV, a Simi Valley woman, was arrested on suspicion of murder and was booked into jail on $4 million bail, Los Angeles police said Wednesday.

The crash occurred at Nordhoff Street and De Soto Avenue just after 5 p.m., according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

ALSO SEE: 3 dead after NBC4 helicopter crashes in flames in Chatsworth

Bailee Lynn Rios, 36, was accused of driving a Ford Expedition SUV southbound in the northbound lanes of De Soto Avenue and running a red light at Nordhoff Street, nearly hitting a vehicle traveling eastbound on Nordhoff before slamming into the bus, police said.

The force of the collision ejected one passenger from the bus and partially ejected a second, police said. Debris from the crash damaged a nearby Honda SUV that was stopped going northbound on De Soto Avenue.

Six people were taken to hospitals for treatment, LAFD said. It was not known how many of those hospitalized came from the bus and the SUV and their conditions were not known.

Two of those hospitalized had to be freed from the wreckage, one from the bus and one from the SUV, fire officials said.

Two men died at the scene, LAFD said. They were identified by the medical examiner as Gage Weida, 31, and Daniel Castillo, 46, of Arleta. Weida’s city of residence was not immediately known.

Weida was pronounced dead on the street, while Castillo died inside the bus, according to the Medical Examiner.

Video from the scene showed firefighters tending to multiple patients, and frantically working to free a woman who was trapped inside the bus. She was eventually freed and quickly loaded into an ambulance in unknown condition with what crews on scene described as “crushing” injuries.

The left side of the bus was heavily damaged, as was the front and passenger side of the SUV, a Ford Expedition, video shows. The two vehicles came to rest at the southeast corner of the intersection in front of a Farmer Boys restaurant.

Kay Ryan told Key News Network, a freelance news organization that sometimes works with the Southern California News Group, that she was waiting at a red light on De Soto Avenue when an SUV went flying by to her left at “freeway speed” and crashed into the bus.

She said she did not hear the screeching of tires before the crash.

While covering the crash, a helicopter contracted by NBC Los Angeles crashed in a commercial area along Mason Avenue and burst into flames, killing the pilot and a journalist as well as a man on the ground.