Kobe Bryant Update: Investigations Reveal More

Three days after the sudden and tragic death of NBA legend Kobe Bryant and eight others, investigations reveal some confirmed facts. The report revealed that the aircraft missed clearing the Californian hillside by just six to nine metres and plummeted towards the ground at high speed.

The Kobe Bryant Tragedy: How it all Went Down

Jennifer Homendy from the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) revealed the helicopter was missing a vital warning system and was flying at just 700 metres. That was when it lost communication and fell at a rate of 60 metres a minute towards the ground.

“So we know that this was a high energy impact crash,” she said at a press conference on Tuesday. “This is a pretty steep descent at high speed.”

In his final transmission, the pilot of a helicopter that crashed, killing nine people including NBA legend Kobe Bryant, told air traffic control he was climbing to avoid a cloud layer, the National Transportation Safety Board said Monday.

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When air traffic control asked the pilot what he planned to do, there was no reply”,SB board member Jennifer Homendy told reporters. The last radar contact was around 9:45 a.m. (12:45 p.m. ET) Sunday”, she said.

Federal investigators have now finished their inspection of the crash site, handing it over to local authorities. Images showed them flying drones over the accident site. The drones manually recreated how the accident must have taken place

 

The Impact

The coroner’s office confirmed all nine bodies had been retrieved from the site, two days after the crash. For examination purposes, they had been “transported to the department’s forensic science centre”. The bodies of pilot Ara Zobayan, baseball coach John Altobelli and Sarah Chester have also been identified. Thereafter, the remaining five – including Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter Gianna – have not yet been officially identified.

The death of Bryant – a five-time NBA champion for the LA Lakers and double Olympic gold medallist – has shocked the world. He was travelling with daughter Gianna and seven other passengers and crew when the Sikorsky S-76 slammed into a hillside in thick fog.