The full weight of the Chatsworth helicopter tragedy has continued to emerge in the days since the crash.
Five people lost their lives on September 15, including NBC4 reporter Eliana Moreno, veteran pilot George Marciniw, and 29-year-old Edy Fernando Gutiérrez Mejía, a visitor from Guatemala.
For Gutiérrez Mejía’s family, the tragedy is especially difficult to comprehend. He had arrived in Los Angeles only hours before the crash, reportedly planning a short trip connected to his work.
For Marciniw’s longtime friend and fellow pilot Esteban Jimenez, another detail has proved almost impossible to process: just two days before the crash, the two men had been talking about the aviation business – and retirement.
The third victim had only just arrived
Gutiérrez Mejía, 29, was from Cuilapa in Guatemala’s Santa Rosa department. According to his relatives, he had traveled to Los Angeles for work and expected to stay for only about two days.
He was reportedly planning to purchase vehicles and arrange shipments of cars, clothing and spare parts back to Guatemala.
Instead, he became the third person killed when the news helicopter came down near Mason Avenue and Nordhoff Street in Chatsworth.
Two other Guatemalan nationals traveling with him — described as a cousin and a friend — survived the crash but were injured and taken to the hospital.
For his family back home, the speed at which everything changed has been devastating.
Aura Estrada, identified as an aunt of Gutiérrez Mejía’s partner, described the family as being “in disbelief.”
“Seeing him in the morning and then at night, the news that he was dead,” she told Univision.
Gutiérrez had been seen alive that same morning. By that evening, his loved ones were learning that he was gone.
Remembered his personality
Those closest to Gutiérrez Mejía say there was much more to him than his work.
His relatives remembered him as someone who loved being around people, enjoyed community events and was always ready with a joke.
“He was very playful, he liked to tell jokes and make people laugh,” his family told KMEX in Spanish.
A cousin, Karla Padilla, remembered him as a man “full of life, with a great desire to live.”
