MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Manchester United blew a two-goal lead to crash out of the English League Cup after a 3-2 loss to Brighton on Wednesday.
Boos rang around Old Trafford at the final whistle as United fell to its third defeat of the season, and second in as many games following Sunday's loss to Manchester City.
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Aston Villa's Tammy Abraham, centre, celebrates scoring their side's third goal during the English League Cup third round soccer match between Coventry City and Aston Villa in Coventry, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (Nick Potts/PA via AP)
Manchester United's head coach Michael Carrick, right, leaves the field after the English League Cup third round soccer match between Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Brighton's Maxim De Cuyper, right, celebrates with teammates after scoring his side's third goal during the English League Cup third round soccer match between Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Brighton's Pascal Gross, right, scores his side's second goal during the English League Cup third round soccer match between Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Manchester United's Shea Lacey celebrates after scoring the opening goal during the English League Cup third round soccer match between Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Brighton's Pascal Gross, right, celebrates after scoring his side's second goal during the English League Cup third round soccer match between Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Manchester United's Mason Mount reacts after Brighton's Pascal Gross scoring his side's second goal during the English League Cup third round soccer match between Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
United led 2-0 after 10 minutes against Brighton through quickfire goals from Shea Lacey and Mason Mount.
But Brighton launched a stunning comeback with Charalampos Kostoulas pulling one back before halftime while Pascal Gross and Maxim De Cuyper secured victory after the break.
Defeat means United has suffered elimination from the League Cup at the earliest stage for the second season in a row, after being knocked out by fourth-tier Grimsby last year.
It was more bad news for United coach Michael Carrick in what is becoming an increasingly troubled start to the campaign.
United has only won two of six games in all competitions and only once in the Premier League.
After leading a resurgence last season that secured a return to the Champions League, Carrick has not been able to maintain that moment. And jeers from the home fans underlined growing unrest.
Such scenes seemed unthinkable when United raced into an eighth-minute lead through academy graduate Lacey, making his first senior start.
Within two minutes Mount doubled the advantage.
But Brighton refused to buckle and Kostoulas halved the deficit from a tight angle in first-half added time.
Gross showed quick feet to create space in the box and fire past United goalkeeper Karl Darlow in the 65th. Four minutes later Brighton capitalized on sloppy defending as De Cuyper poked home the winner from close range.
Marcus Rashford had the chance to level when running through on goal, but couldn't beat keeper Jason Steele when one on one.
United plays winless Fulham away on Sunday before the first international break of the season.
Aston Villa is still to win in the Premier League this season, but it's a different story in cup competitions.
Victory against Club Brugge in the Champions League last week was followed by a 3-1 win against Coventry in the League Cup with Tammy Abraham scoring twice.
It was newly-promoted Coventry's fifth loss in six games in all.
Charly Alcaraz scored the only goal of the game as Everton beat Wolverhampton.
Fourth-tier Fleetwood also won 1-0 against second-tier side Sheffield United.
Fleetwood will have the chance of an even bigger giant-killing when it hosts Premier League champion Arsenal in the fourth round next month.
The biggest draw of the round will see Liverpool host Chelsea at Anfield.
Holder Manchester City plays Norwich on Thursday and the winner will take on Brighton.
Fourth-round draw:
Fleetwood vs. Arsenal
Man City or Norwich vs. Brighton
Everton vs. Newcastle
Sunderland vs. Brentford
Liverpool vs. Chelsea
Bradford vs. Peterborough
Fulham vs. Crystal Palace
Bournemouth vs. Aston Villa
James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson
See AP’s full soccer coverage here
Aston Villa's Tammy Abraham, centre, celebrates scoring their side's third goal during the English League Cup third round soccer match between Coventry City and Aston Villa in Coventry, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (Nick Potts/PA via AP)
Manchester United's head coach Michael Carrick, right, leaves the field after the English League Cup third round soccer match between Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Brighton's Maxim De Cuyper, right, celebrates with teammates after scoring his side's third goal during the English League Cup third round soccer match between Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Brighton's Pascal Gross, right, scores his side's second goal during the English League Cup third round soccer match between Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Manchester United's Shea Lacey celebrates after scoring the opening goal during the English League Cup third round soccer match between Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Brighton's Pascal Gross, right, celebrates after scoring his side's second goal during the English League Cup third round soccer match between Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
Manchester United's Mason Mount reacts after Brighton's Pascal Gross scoring his side's second goal during the English League Cup third round soccer match between Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion in Manchester, England, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A motorist was arrested on murder charges after authorities say she slammed her SUV into a city bus in Los Angeles, killing at least two people and injuring six others in a prelude to a second deadly tragedy: the fiery crash of a TV news helicopter that was covering the collision.
Bailee Lynn Rios, 36, of Simi Valley, was arrested Tuesday night and was being held at a Los Angeles jail with bail set at $4 million, police said Wednesday. The case is being forwarded to the district attorney's office, which will decide whether to file the charges in court or pursue different ones. Information on a lawyer who could speak on her behalf was not immediately available.
The helicopter, which was used by NBC and Telemundo, crashed about two hours after police say Rios drove her 2004 Ford Expedition the wrong way down a busy avenue, ran a red light and struck a vehicle before hitting the bus. One passenger was fully ejected from the bus and another was partially ejected, police said.
Rios’ mother, Cindy Rios, said she was shocked and saddened by the string of events. She said she had not spoken to Bailee Lynn since her arrest and had not been contacted by law enforcement.
“It’s just horrible,” Cindy Rios told The Associated Press in a phone interview Wednesday. “The fact that my daughter was involved and was the cause of it is just extremely disturbing.”
“If anything, I’m sorry for the other families,” she added. “My daughter’s alive. People lost their lives.”
The two people who died in the bus crash were identified as Gage Weida, 31, and Daniel Castillo, 46, of Los Angeles. No city was given for Weida, but according to his Facebook page, he also lived in Los Angeles.
NBC4 Los Angeles reported that two people aboard the helicopter — reporter Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw — were killed when the chopper went down Tuesday in the Chatsworth neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley north of downtown.
A person on the ground, identified as 29-year-old Edy Gutierrez Mejia, died in a parking lot, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office said. He was from Guatemala, the country's consulate confirmed.
The crash happened as news crews were reporting on the collision involving the SUV that slammed into the bus.
There were no immediate details on what caused the helicopter crash, but an alarm could be heard sounding inside the helicopter's cockpit as it lost altitude in the final seconds of video the crew broadcast before the crash.
Just after the beeping noise 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.
“That video is probably the most important evidence that we have discovered so far,” National Transportation Safety Board investigator Fabian Salazar said Wednesday at a news briefing.
Salazar said the sounds were consistent with the helicopter's engine changing speed, as well as what he said were likely advisory tones for the pilot. The NTSB said it is also investigating the bus collision.
The helicopter, a Eurocopter AS350, went down near a large storage facility. At least four cars and two storage containers burned after the helicopter caught fire. NBC4 reporter Robert Kovacik was at the bus scene and saw black smoke and rushed to the helicopter crash site.
Moreno was a familiar voice for NBC4 and Telemundo 52 during the station’s aerial coverage. She and Marciniw were both were employees of Angel City Air, which operated the chopper for the station.
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, the NBC4 website said.
Marciniw grew up in Southern California and graduated from Burbank High School in 1974.
“I think a lot of us are still trying to process what happened, this terrible loss,” NBC4 reporter Lauren Coronado told viewers early Wednesday as she stood near the crash site. A hazmat crew was cleaning up jet fuel, she said.
In a tribute to Moreno and Marciniw, the newscast referred to them as “the team in the sky,” saying Moreno would often post videos from her job and was in awe of the view. Anchor Lynette Romero held a colleague’s hand and wiped away tears after hearing Moreno’s voice when one of her posts was played.
In an interview with the station, Esteban Jimenez, a pilot, said he had known Marciniw since the 1990s. He said Marciniw had been his instructor.
“I just talked to him on Sunday. We were talking about the aviation business and retiring,” he said.
Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said the alarm sounding in the helicopter’s final video sounds like the low rotor RPM warning horn that signals the main rotor is no longer spinning enough to keep the helicopter in the air.
“It just has all the earmarks of a potential loss of engine power and a dangerous decrease in the main rotor speed,” said Guzzetti who used to investigate crashes for both the NTSB and FAA.
Guzzetti said the pilot appeared to be trying to perform an emergency maneuver to use the wind to force the rotor to spin again much like a breeze turns a windmill. Doing that can create a bit of lift that could help cushion the impact, but Guzzetti said there would have been little opportunity to do that because the helicopter had been hovering at a low altitude beforehand.
There are risks to news helicopters particularly in a major city like Los Angeles where multiple helicopters respond to an incident, but the pilots all coordinate closely over the radio to ensure they maintain a safe distance from each other. The industry also shares best practices to help keep these news flights safe.
“It’s a very unique form of flying. And the community is very good about lessons learned,” Guzzetti said. “And so because of that, you don’t hear about too many of those accidents. So they’re rare, but they do occur, just because the mission is a risky one.”
The station said this is the second aviation tragedy in its history.
In 1977, a KNBC news helicopter crashed when it ran out of fuel while returning to the station after covering a wildfire in Santa Barbara, killing the pilot and camera operator. The pilot, former U.S. Air Force officer Francis Gary Powers, had been in the news years earlier when he was shot down and captured while flying a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union for the CIA, an ordeal portrayed in the movie “Bridge of Spies.”
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.
They include a 2023 crash in a New Jersey forest that killed the pilot and a photographer aboard a helicopter used by Philadelphia station WPVI and a 2022 crash beside a Charlotte, North Carolina, interstate that killed a pilot and meteorologist during a training flight for WBTV.
A 2007 midair collision in Phoenix of two TV news helicopters that were covering a police chase led the NTSB to recommend that news helicopters have at least two people in the cockpit so the pilot can focus on flying while the reporter focuses on the story.
This story has been updated to correct that Marciniw, not Moreno, graduated from Burbank High School and to correct the spelling of Jeff Guzzetti's last name.
Golden reported from Seattle, and Collins from Hartford, Connecticut. Associated Press writers Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco; Michael Sisak in New York; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; and Allen Breed in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed.
In this aerial view, people investigate the aftermath of a news helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026.(AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
A police officer works the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
An aerial view of the aftermath of a news helicopter that crashed in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
An aerial view of the aftermath of a news helicopter that crashed in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
An aerial view of the aftermath of a news helicopter that crashed in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass attends a news conference at the scene of a helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
First responders work the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass joined by other officials walk to a news conference near the scene of a helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
Two people hug each other behind police lines at the scene of a helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass talks during a news conference at the scene after a helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
In this still image provided by KABC-TV shows first responders work the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (KABC-TV via AP)
In this still image provided by KABC-TV shows First responders work the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (KABC-TV via AP)
In this still image provided by KABC-TV shows firefighters respond to a deadly bus crash, in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (KABC-TV via AP)
In this still image provided by KABC-TV shows a helicopter that crashed near a deadly bus crash, in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (KABC-TV via AP)
First responders work the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
