Kobe Bryant chopper crash: NBA star’s final moments with daughter revealed as LeBron James shared emotional tribute
NBA star LeBron James has shared an emotional tribute to Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, after details of their final day together before they died in a chopper crash emerged.
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Kobe Bryant attended church with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna just hours before dying in a helicopter crash with seven others.
The basketball legend and his daughter attended 7am Catholic mass and received Communion at the Cathedral of Our Lady Queen of the Angels in Newport Beach, The New York Post reports.
After leaving, the two boarded a Sikorsky S-76B with the other occupants at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana at 9.06am.
Less than an hour later, in foggy conditions, the chopper crashed in the hilly terrain of Calabasas.
Bishop Timothy Freyer, of Bryant’s Diocese, mourned the nine fatalities in a heartfelt Facebook post.
Freyer also called Bryant “a committed Catholic who loved his family and loved his faith.”
At mass, the NBA icon would keep a low profile by sitting “in the back of the church so that his presence would not distract people from focusing on Christ’s Presence,” Freyer wrote.
LEBRON’S HEARTFELT MESSAGE
NBA legend LeBron James has paid an emotional tribute to Bryant after he was spotted tearing up when he learnt of the crash.
James accompanied an Instagram post of the pair shaking hands at a Lakers game with a caption saying he struggled to hold back tears as he wrote the post.
“Every time I try I begin crying again just thinking about you, niece Gigi and the friendship/bond/brotherhood we had!,” James wrote.
“I literally just heard your voice Sunday morning before I left Philly to head back to LA. Didn’t think for one bit in a million years that would be the last conversation we’d have.”
He said he was “heartbroken” and “devastated” and that his heart went out to Bryant’s wife Vanessa and their surviving children.
“I promise you I’ll continue your legacy man! You mean so much to us all here especially #LakerNation and it’s my responsibility to put this shit on my back and keep it going!!,” he wrote.
“Please give me the strength from the heavens above and watch over me! I got US here!! There’s so much more I want to say but just can’t right now because I can’t get through it! Until we meet again my brother!!”
James and Bryant never played with each other in the NBA, but the two teamed up to win two gold medals at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.
They are also commonly referred to as being among the two best players in NBA history.
LeBron James. 😢 pic.twitter.com/4g9zD2EQ2p
— Chamatkar Sandhu (@SandhuMMA) January 26, 2020
CHOPPER CLIMBED TO AVOID CLOUDS BEFORE CRASH
Crews recovered three bodies on Sunday and resumed the search on Monday local time amid an outpouring of grief and shock over the loss of the basketball great.
The Los Angeles County medical examiner, Dr. Jonathan Lucas, said the terrain complicated efforts to recover the remains.
He estimated it would take at least a couple of days to complete the task.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member Jennifer Homendy said the FBI had been called in to assist in the collection of evidence from the crash scene. She clarified “there is no criminal portion of this investigation.”
“There have been a lot of questions about the FBI and why the FBI is here. The NTSB has a memorandum of understanding with the FBI to help us collect evidence. They are essentially a force multiplier for the NTSB,” she said.
Ms Homendy also revealed the pilot was climbing to avoid a cloud layer before it crashed.
The pilot had asked for and received special clearance to fly in heavy fog just minutes before Sunday’s crash and was flying at 1400 feet (427 meters) when he went south and then west. The pilot then asked for air traffic controllers to provide “flight following” aide but was told the craft was too low, Homendy said.
About four minutes later, “the pilot advised they were climbing to avoid a cloud layer,” she said.
“When ATC asked what the pilot planned to do, there was no reply. Radar data indicates the helicopter climbed to 2,300 feet (701 meters) and then began a left descending turn. Last radar contact was around 9.45am and is consistent with the accident location.”
Two minutes later, someone on the ground called 911 to report the crash.
“The debris field is pretty extensive,” Homendy said.
“A piece of the tail is down the hill,” she said.
“The fuselage is on the other side of that hill. And then the main rotor is about 100 yards (91 meters) beyond that.”
Some experts suggested that the pilot might have gotten disoriented because of fog but Ms Homendy said investigating teams would look at everything from the pilot’s history to the engines.
“We look at man, machine and the environment,” she said.
“And weather is just a small portion of that.”
LAKERS GAME CALLED OFF
The NBA has postponed the Lakers-Clippers game that was scheduled for Tuesday local time.
“The decision was made out of respect for the Lakers organisation, which is deeply grieving the tragic loss of Lakers legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven other people in a helicopter crash on Sunday,” the NBA said in a statement.
No make up date has been released.
The UConn Huskies Women’s basketball team is paying tribute to Gianna before Monday night’s game against Team USA by a draping a number 2 jersey on a chair with a bouquet of flowers.
Bryant said his daughter was “hellbent on UConn.”
Meanwhile, 700,000 people have signed a petition requesting the NBA switch their logo to a Kobe Bryant silhouette.
“The current logo was designed by Alan Siegel, and features the silhouette of another great LA Lakers player Jerry West, who is 81 years old.”
Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho, who was working on a children’s book with Bryant, says he has deleted the draft.
“I deleted the draft because it didn’t make any sense to publish without him,” Coelho told AP from his home in Geneva.
“It wouldn’t add anything relevant to him or his family.”
Coelho’s decision disappointed many of Bryant’s fans, who flooded the writer’s social media channels asking for the draft not to be erased.
The acclaimed writer said the idea of the book was to inspire underprivileged children to overcome adversity through sport.
A 2018 interview with Kobe Bryant sheds more light on why the NBA legend was in the chopper that killed him, his daughter and seven others.
Speaking to The Corp with A-Rod and Big Cat, Bryant explained he started using helicopters daily because LA’s traffic congestion was eating into his family time.
“I was sitting in traffic and wound up missing things like the school play,” he said.
“I had to figure out a way where I could still train and focus on the craft, but still not compromise family time, so that’s when I looked into helicopters.”
Bryant had been known since his playing days for taking helicopters instead of braving the notoriously snarled Los Angeles traffic.
“I’m not going into LA without the Mamba chopper,” he joked on Jimmy Kimmel Live in a 2018 interview, referring to his own nickname, Black Mamba.
PILOT’S LAST WORDS CAUGHT ON TAPE
Bryant’s pilot got special clearance to fly in worse than normal conditions in the lead-up to the helicopter crash which killed the NBA star, his daughter and seven others.
The aircraft was operating under “special visual flight rules”, or Special VFR, according to an air traffic control conversation with the pilot, Ara Zobayan, audio recordings revealed.
The clearance allowed the pilot to fly in weather conditions worse than those allowed for standard visual flight rules.
“Maintain Special VFR at or below 2,500 (feet, or 750 metres)” the pilot confirms to the controller.
Zobayan was still flying under Special – allowing the pilot to fly in conditions worse than those allowed for standard VFE – when the helicopter smashed into a mountainside near Los Angeles at 300km/h.
The New York Post reports the pilot was warned he was flying too low for so-called “flight following” – meaning the chopper could not be picked up by radar to receive guidance from air traffic control under visual flight rules.
The audio between Zobayan and air traffic control reveals an attempt to guide the Sikorsky S-76B — tail number N72EX — to Burbank Airport.
“Helicopter 7-2 Echo X-ray, you’re still too low for flight following at this time,” the controller tells Zobayan.
The pilot had been holding for 15 minutes while other flights were taking off under IFR, or instrument flight rules, and he requested the Special VFR clearance.
“Maintain Special VFR at or below 2,500 (feet)” the pilot confirms to the controller.
“Advise when you are in VFR conditions,” the controller radios to Zobayan at one point when the helicopter was at 1,400 feet.
The pilot then informs ATC that he is flying VFR at 1,500 feet and requests flight following from SoCal, which handles low-altitude traffic in Southern California.
Flight following is a service that air traffic control provides to pilots under VFR to improve their situational awareness and avoid collisions with other aircraft.
The controller asks Zobayan to squawk “ident,” which would allow him to identify the chopper’s transponder on radar.
“You’re following a 1200 code. So you’re requesting flight following?” the controller asks, referring to the transponder code used while flying VFR.
That’s when he warns Zobayan that he’s “still too low for flight following” before communications cut off completely.
Aviation sources said the LA weather was extremely foggy Sunday morning and most helicopter traffic was grounded.
Zobayan climbed to 2,000 feet, then descended at a rate of more than 4,000 feet per minute and flew into a mountain at about 1,400 feet at a speed of 161 knots, or 185mph, according to data from FlightRadar24.
A second aviation source said Bryant’s chopper had twin engines, so they would not have crashed if they had lost one engine.
“All the signs point to a CFIT [controlled flight into terrain] which is when an aircraft under the complete control of a pilot is inadvertently flown into the land, sea, or a building,” the source said.
“These accidents happen when the pilot loses situational awareness. The crash site also points to this, given how the debris is scattered, it looks like they went nose-first into the mountain.”
The source added, “Kobe’s helicopter is 29 years old, and most Sikorsky S-76s fly with two pilots. On Sunday, Kobe had just one pilot, who was likely flying on visual flight rules, rather than using instruments to monitor altitude.”
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the accident.
EXPERTS SUSPECT PILOT GOT LOST IN FOG
Randy Waldman, a helicopter flight instructor who teaches at the nearby Van Nuys airport, said its likely the pilot got disoriented in the fog and the helicopter went into a fatal dive.
“It’s a common thing that happens in aeroplanes and helicopters with people flying with poor visibility,” Waldman said.
“If you’re flying visually, if you get caught in a situation where you can’t see out the windshield, the life expectancy of the pilot and the aircraft is maybe 10, 15 seconds, and it happens all the time, and it’s really a shame.”
Waldman said it was the same thing that happened to John F. Kennedy Jr. when his plane dropped out of the sky near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, in 1999.
“A lot of times somebody who’s doing it for a living is pressured to get their client to where they have to go,” Waldman said.
“They take chances that maybe they shouldn’t take.”
Kurt Deetz, who flew for Bryant dozens of times in the same chopper that went down, said permission is often granted in the area.
“It happened all the time in the winter months in LA,” Deetz said. “You get fog.”
David Hoeppner, an expert on helicopter design, said he won’t fly on helicopters.
“Part of it is the way they certify and design these things,” said Hoeppner, a retired engineering professor at the University of Utah.
“But the other part is helicopter pilots often fly in conditions where they shouldn’t be flying.”
CRASH VICTIMS NAMED
The remaining victims of the helicopter crash that killed NBA superstar Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna have been named.
Gianna’s basketball teammates Alyssa Altobelli and Payton Chester, Alyssa’s parents John and Keri Altobelli, Payton’s mother Sarah Chester, girls’ basketball coach Christina Mauser and pilot Ara Zobayan also died in the fiery crash.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said a flight manifest listed eight passengers and one pilot.
“There were no survivors … There were nine people on board the aircraft, the pilot plus eight individuals,” Sheriff Villanueva said.
The three passengers named earlier were John Altobelli, a baseball coach at Orange Coast College, his wife, Keri and their daughter Alyssa.
Payton Chester, St. Margaret Episcopal School Student, Friend of Gianna Bryant, Also Died in Helicopter Crash https://t.co/CYRHoCEsFF pic.twitter.com/T0nJBCbgFP
— Highlighthwd (@Highlighthwd) January 27, 2020
Alyssa was a close friend of Gianna Bryant and the pair both played on the Los Angeles Lady Mambas Team.
The teenager was the youngest of three children and is survived by her elder sister Alexis and brother J.J, a former University of Oregon baseball star who is now a scout with the Boston Red Sox.
In a post on Instagram last November, Kobe Bryant praised Alyssa for her “great defence” skills as he shared a video of her playing alongside his daughter Gianna.
The Altobelli family regularly travelled with the Bryants to practices and games, Orange Coast College Assistant Coach Ron La Ruffa confirmed.
Christina Mauser, a girls’ basketball coach at a private school in Orange County, California, was on-board, her husband Matt Mauser confirmed.
“My kids and I are devastated. We lost our beautiful wife and mom today in a helicopter crash. Please respect our privacy. Thank you for all the well wishes they mean so much,” he said in a post on Facebook.
Another player, and that player’s parent, were also on board the chopper, celebrity American news blogger Perez Hilton reports.
Gianna Bryant, known as Gigi, was the second daughter to Bryant and his long-time wife Vanessa, to whom he had become engaged when she was just 17 and he was a 20-year-old rising star.
The pair welcomed their fourth daughter, Capri, last June. They also have two daughters -Natalia and Bianka.
A recent video filmed at a basketball game showed Bryant and Gigi court side, with him talking animatedly to his daughter about the game.
This video of Kobe talking basketball with his daughter Gianna from a few weeks ago takes on a whole new meaning. pic.twitter.com/vsVVucLSNe
— Zach Haberman (@ZHaberman) January 26, 2020
Bryant played for 20 years with the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA and is regarded as one of the greatest basketballers of all time.
He also won an Oscar in 2018 for an animated film.
Bryant visited Australia in March last year, with fans paying almost $8000 a ticket to hear him speak in Melbourne.
As news of his death spread, fans gathered near the hillside crash site to pay tribute.
Shareef O’Neal, the son of NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal, on Monday revealed Bryant reached out to him less than two hours before the crash.
O’Neal posted a screenshot on Twitter, showing an Instagram direct message from Kobe who was checking in on the UCLA transfer.
Responding to Bryant asking how he was going, O’Neal updated his close friend and asked the same question — but never got a response.
Literally this morning you reached out to me ....😔 I love you forever uncâ¤ï¸ I love you pic.twitter.com/3oVgvKKUkm
— Shareef O’Neal (@SSJreef) January 26, 2020
SEARCH FOR BLACK BOX RECORDER
It appears there was no distress signal or warning before the helicopter slammed into the mountainside at about 300km/h.
However, investigators reportedly say the helicopter had a black box flight recorder which they will seek to recover.
The chopper contacted the control tower at Burbank airport shortly before 10am local time.
Five minutes later it crashed into the hillside near Kourtney Kardashian’s home.
The pilot flying the helicopter should never have taken off on the short trip because of foggy conditions, an aviation expert has said.
Conditions were so bad the LA Police Department had grounded its Air Support Division.
Tracking data from the downed flight shows the helicopter circled near Pasadena for about 15 minutes before veering off course into the mountains behind Santa Monica.
Strategic Aviation Solutions chairman Neil Hansford told News Corp Australia the pilot was flying at the dangerously low altitude of 260m when it circled six times above the LA Zoo.
“It’s probably going to come down to weather,” he said.
“There was a lot of fog.
“That’s when the pilot recognised there was trouble. He would have been probably waiting for it to clear.
“And rather than head back, he punched on.”
The tracking map shows the helicopter veered off course and headed northwest into a nearby valley, then south where they crashed into a hillside at 600m.
Mr Hansford said the LA Police Air Support Division was grounded during the search because of the fog.
“Basically, it’s the old case, you don’t go where angels fear to tread.
“If the LA Police Department were grounded, why did these guys choose to go?
“The fog has clamped in on him.
“He would have got the weather report.
“It says what the cloud ceiling is.
“And you look at what the terrain is where you are heading.
“If you’ve got mountains up to 2000 feet (609m), then you make sure you have clouds above 2000 feet.
“Basically if the weather is that bad, and the words they are using are ‘extremely foggy’, well, basically, the police department weren’t flying, then why would you go?”
In a statement to The Los Angeles Times, the LA Police Department confirmed it had grounded its helicopters in the morning due to foggy conditions and they did not fly until the afternoon.
“The weather situation did not meet our minimum standards for flying,” department spokesman Josh Rubenstein said.
PILOT WAS ‘RATED TO FLY IN FOG’
Helicopter pilot Ara Zobayan was “instrument rated … to fly in fog/clouds”, according to radio station KLTA’s Christina Pascucci, a licensed pilot.
She tweeted that he was an experienced flyer who taught aspiring helicopter pilots to fly “and was very much loved in the aviation community”.
A friend of Zobayan wrote a glowing tribute to the late pilot on Twitter.
“Working for the aviation business has allowed me to meet some pretty amazing people and pilots. Area was definitely one of them. Always so nice, talkative and especially attentive when it came to Kobe and his family. I’m heartbroken.”
US Army helicopter instructor Craig Lounsbury said on Facebook that Zobayan had been his “friend and pilot mentor”.
In 2017, Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka told the Los Angeles Times that his life flashed before his eyes during a helicopter trip with Bryant.
“My life was flashing before my eyes. I almost had a heart attack. Kobe’s just sitting there calm and collected,” Pelinka said.
Pelinka said that Bryant had instructed the pilot to perform elaborate military-style manoeuvrers during their trip together.
BRYANT TO JOIN HALL OF FAME
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is set to bypass the normal election process and make the late Kobe Bryant the first inductee of the 2020 class.
“Expected to be arguably the most epic class ever with Kobe, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett,” Hall of Fame chairman Jerry Colangelo said, as per a report in the Athletic.
“Kobe will be honoured the way he should be.”
The other 2020 finalists will be announced on February 14 during All-Star Weekend.
Born in Philadelphia in 1978, the son of former NBA player Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, Kobe entered the NBA from high school and played his entire 20-year career with the Lakers.
He won five NBA championships and was an All-Star 18 times.
He was also a 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, 12-time member of the All-Defensive team and was the NBA’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) in 2008.
On his retirement in 2016, Bryant was the third-leading scorer in NBA history, a place he held in the league scoring ranks until Saturday night, local time, when the Lakers’ LeBron James passed him for third place during a game in Philadelphia, Bryant’s hometown.
Bryant’s last social media post was to congratulate James.
“Continuing to move the game forward (at) KingJames. Much respect my brother.”
Bryant was one of the game’s most popular players as the face of the 16-time NBA champion Lakers franchise.