SUV Driver Faces Murder Charges After Deadly Metro Bus Crash

LOS ANGELES — Two passengers were killed and six others injured when a 2004 Ford Expedition broadsided a westbound Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) Line 166 bus in Chatsworth around 5 p.m. Tuesday. The deceased were 46-year-old Daniel Castillo and 31-year-old Gage Weida, who was thrown from the vehicle upon impact and succumbed to his injuries at the scene.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office charged 36-year-old Bailee Lynn Rios with two counts of second-degree murder, reckless driving, and driving under the influence of drugs. If convicted on all counts, Rios faces a maximum sentence of life in state prison, District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced.

Rios was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court in San Fernando. The proceeding was postponed to Friday after she was held at the jail facility due to an undisclosed medical event.

Surveillance cameras around the intersection of De Soto Avenue and Nordhoff Street captured Rios traveling at high speed on the wrong side of De Soto Avenue while bypassing waiting rush-hour traffic. The footage shows the SUV running a red light and narrowly missing another vehicle in the intersection.

The Expedition then struck the bus without apparent braking. The force of the impact drove the SUV’s front end deep into the side frame of the transit vehicle. Paramedics transported six other bus passengers to area hospitals; one was listed in severe condition, while five sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

Prosecutors are centering their second-degree murder case on proving “implied malice,” a high legal threshold requiring proof that the motorist acted with a conscious disregard for human life. Under California law, a vehicular fatality generally requires evidence of implied malice rather than a premeditated intent to kill.

To meet that burden, prosecutors must prove that a defendant deliberately performed an act dangerous to life, knew the conduct endangered others, and acted with conscious disregard for that danger. Investigators are assembling physical, digital, and documentary evidence from the crash scene.

Narcotics were recovered from inside the Expedition, and investigators determined Rios was operating the vehicle while impaired. Los Angeles Police Department detectives are extracting data from the SUV’s event data recorder (EDR), commonly referred to as a vehicle’s black box.

The device captures technical metrics from the final seconds before a crash, including exact vehicle speed, throttle position, steering inputs, and whether the brake systems were engaged. The use of vehicle telemetry data to substantiate implied malice in Southern California courts mirrors the evidentiary strategy used in the 2024 trial of Rebecca Grossman.

Grossman was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder for striking two young boys in a Westlake Village crosswalk while impaired by alcohol and prescription medication. In that case, crash data showing extreme speed and continuous acceleration played a central role in establishing wanton disregard for human life.

In many California DUI murder prosecutions, implied malice is established through a formal judicial warning known as a *Watson* advisement. Mandated under California Vehicle Code Section 23593, the advisement is read to individuals convicted of driving under the influence and places them on the record that operating a vehicle while impaired is inherently dangerous to human life and that future fatal DUI crashes can result in murder charges.

Court records indicate Rios had not previously received a formal *Watson* advisement from a judge. Prosecutors frequently establish implied malice through other evidence, including prior traffic stops, officer warnings, mandatory rehabilitation classes, and earlier vehicular incidents documented on body-worn video or police reports.

Public records show Rios has a history of substance abuse offenses spanning more than a decade in Ventura County, centered in Simi Valley. Local law enforcement agencies arrested her more than a dozen times, primarily on suspicion of narcotics-related offenses.

In 2016, Rios was charged with possession of methamphetamine and possession of Xanax without a prescription. After pleading guilty to the misdemeanor methamphetamine charge, the remaining count was dismissed. She was sentenced to probation with mandated drug testing and court-ordered treatment.

Court dockets show Rios was cited for probation violations three times between 2017 and 2019. Each occasion resulted in court mandates to re-enroll in drug rehabilitation programs before she was placed on conditional revocable release.

Ventura County prosecutors charged Rios in 2022 with misdemeanor counts of being under the influence of a controlled substance, possession of heroin, possession of alprazolam, and possession of drug paraphernalia. She was also cited for driving with a suspended or revoked license stemming from an earlier traffic accident.

Following a four-month diversion program involving Narcotics Anonymous meetings, Rios entered a plea of no contest to the suspended license charge. Cindy Rios, the defendant’s mother, told the Associated Press that her daughter had long battled substance abuse issues and expressed grief over the incident.

Minutes after the fatal crash, an airborne news helicopter covering the traffic collision suffered an apparent catastrophic failure and crashed several blocks away. An NBC4 reporter, a pilot, and a person on the ground were killed. The District Attorney’s Office confirmed Rios faces no criminal charges related to the helicopter crash.