Kobe Bryant killed in crash?

Sources: Kobe Bryant was on his way to a travel basketball game with his daughter Gianna when the helicopter crashed. Those aboard the helicopter also included another player and parent.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) January 26, 2020

How can Kobe Bryant be gone? His legend wasn’t supposed to end this way

BILL PLASCHKE

https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers/story/2020-01-26/bill-plaschke-column-on-kobe-bryant

Kobe Bryant is gone.

I’m screaming right now, cursing into the sky, crying into my keyboard, and I don’t care who knows it.

Kobe Bryant is gone, and those are the hardest words I’ve ever had to write for this newspaper, and I still don’t believe them as I’m writing them. I’m still crying, and go ahead, let it out. Don’t be embarrassed, cry with me, weep and wail and shout into the streets, fill a suddenly empty Los Angeles with your pain.

No. No. No, damn it, no!

Bryant, 41, and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, were among nine people who died in a helicopter crash Sunday in Calabasas and how does that happen? Kobe is stronger than any helicopter. He didn’t even need a helicopter. For 20 years he flew into greatness while carrying a breathless city with him.

This can’t be true.

Kobe does not die. Not now. Kobe lives into his golden years, lives long enough to see his statues erected outside Staples Center and his jerseys inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. He lives long enough to sit courtside at Staples when he’s stooped and gray, keeping alive the memories of two decades of greatness with a wink, maybe even fooling everyone one last time by retiring in a community next to Shaq.

How can Mamba be dead? Mambas don’t die. Why this, why now, why him, why them? Kobe and Gianna leave behind an incredibly strong wife and mother, Vanessa, and daughters Natalia, 17, Bianka, 3, and Capri, who was born last summer. The horror of this is unspeakable. The tragedy of this is immeasurable.

Go ahead and keep crying, you won’t be alone. A huge hole has been cut out of Los Angeles’ heart, and the wound is breathtaking.

Kobe was your childhood hero. He was your adult icon. For 20 years he was on posters in your bedroom, on the television in your living room, in the lunch talk in your school cafeteria, in the smack talk at your office water cooler, and ultimately riding on a truck down Figueroa Street while you cheered and bragged and bathed in his greatness.

You watched him grow up, and this city’s relentless approach to sports grew with him, and soon, even with all of his off-court failings, many people felt they carried a little piece of him.

On your best days, the days you landed a big account or aced a big test or just survived a battle with traffic, you felt like Kobe. You were Kobe. And in the end, as he retired into a life of movies and books and coaching Gianna’s basketball team, he was us.

For me, he not only dominated my professional life, he consumed it. He arrived in Los Angeles two months before I began writing this column. We used to joke that we started our journeys together. But then he would pat me on the back and shake his head at that notion because, well, he always followed his own path.

He was the one Laker who never had an entourage, and many nights after games we would chat as I walked with him to his car. Except when he would get mad at me for what he considered unfair criticism, and then we wouldn’t talk for weeks, because when he playing, he was that rare fighter who never dropped his fists.

I covered his first game. I covered his last game. I wrote about everything in between, the titles and the sexual assault charges and the trade demands and the titles again and then finally that 60-point career-ending game against Utah.

I screamed from press row that night, just as I’m screaming now, still shaking, still not believing.

Kobe Bryant is gone.

We just talked last week.

I emailed Kobe with a request to speak to him about being passed on the all-time scoring list by LeBron James.

He emailed me back immediately. He always did.

He cleared his calendar and made time to chat on the phone because, as he always said, “You’ve been there for everything with me.”

But then, in our 20-minute conversation, he showed a side of Kobe that I had not seen before.

The edge was gone. The arms were open. He urged acceptance of LeBron. He preached calm for Lakers fans. He said greatness wasn’t worth anything if you couldn’t share it.

After about five minutes the message of this call was clear, the steely-eyed Mamba was purposely moving into a role of a wise, embracing and grateful leader of a community that had shown him so much patience and love.

“It’s crazy, watching this city and growing with it,” he said before hanging up. “I feel such an appreciation, I can never pay the city back for what it’s given me.”

And now he’s gone. Kobe is gone. Kobe is gone.

I’ll say it 81 times and it still won’t make any sense.

Kobe Bryant is gone and, so, too, is a little bit of all of us.

Helicopter carrying Kobe Bryant made climbing turn before rapid dive

ESPN

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28572984/helicopter-carrying-kobe-bryant-made-climbing-turn-rapid-dive

The helicopter carrying Kobe Bryant and eight other passengers that crashed into a hillside in Southern California on Sunday was in a climbing left turn about 2,400 feet high before it dove to the ground, a person familiar with preliminary investigative information about the fatal crash told ESPN.

Further, the source told ESPN, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, the pilot had, only moments before, contacted air traffic controllers to say that he had begun a climb to “go above the layer” of clouds present.

The chopper went down in Calabasas, about 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles after departing John Wayne Airport in Orange County at 9:06 a.m. PT. The first 911 call reporting the crash was received at 9:47 a.m.

Audio reviewed by ESPN indicates that a few minutes prior to the crash, an air traffic controller told the pilot he was “still too low level for flight following,” meaning the aircraft was below the level at which it could be picked up by radar due to the area’s hilly terrain. That audio came from recordings posted on LiveATC.net, which has partial audio of the communication between the pilot and air traffic controllers.

Additional recordings between the pilot and air traffic controllers posted on the site indicate that the pilot was getting guidance from controllers as he navigated what was reported to be a dense morning fog.

Air traffic controllers noted poor visibility around Burbank, just to the north, and Van Nuys, to the northwest.

After holding up the helicopter for other aircraft, they cleared the Sikorsky S-76 to proceed north along Interstate 5 through Burbank before turning west to follow U.S Route 101, the Ventura Highway.

Shortly after 9:40 a.m., the helicopter turned again, toward the southeast, and climbed to more than 2,000 feet above sea level. It then descended and crashed into the hillside at about 1,400 feet, according to data from Flightradar24.

When it struck the ground, the helicopter was flying at about 160 knots (184 mph) and descending at a rate of more than 4,000 feet per minute (45 mph), the Flightradar24 data showed.

Authorities said that nine people were aboard the helicopter and presumed dead. Bryant, an all-time basketball great who spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers, was among the victims.

Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter Gianna also was killed, a source told ESPN.

The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a team of investigators to the site. The NTSB typically issues a preliminary report within about 10 days that gives a rough summary of what investigators have learned. A ruling on the cause of aviation crashes can take a year or more.

Among other things, investigators will look at the pilot’s history, the chopper’s maintenance history, and the records of its owner and operator, NTSB board member Jennifer Homendy said at a news conference.

An FAA aircraft registration database showed the helicopter was a 1991 Sikorsky S-76B model owned by a company named Island Express Holding Corp. It was previously owned by the State of Illinois, according to the database.

“The S-76 is a pretty expensive, sophisticated helicopter. … It’s certainly a quality helicopter,” said Justin Green, an aviation attorney in New York who flew helicopters in the Marine Corps.

Colin Storm was in his living room in Calabasas when he heard what sounded to him like a low-flying airplane or helicopter.

“It was very foggy so we couldn’t see anything,” he said. “But then we heard some sputtering, and then a boom.”

Storm could see smoke rising from the hillside in front of his home.

Firefighters hiked in with medical equipment and hoses, and medical personnel rappelled to the site from a helicopter, but found no survivors, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said.

Firefighters worked to douse flames that spread through about a quarter acre of dry brush, Osby said.

Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Josh Rubenstein said that the department’s Air Support division grounded its helicopters Sunday morning due to foggy conditions and didn’t fly until later in the afternoon.

“The weather situation did not meet our minimum standards for flying,” Rubenstein said.

The fog “was enough that we were not flying.” LAPD’s flight minimums are 2 miles of visibility and an 800-foot cloud ceiling, he said. The department typically flies two helicopters when conditions allow — one in the San Fernando Valley and one in the L.A. basin, he said.

The LAPD Air Support Division is the largest municipal airborne law enforcement organization in the United States, according to the department.