Kobe Bryant died at the age of 41 on Sunday, January 26, alongside his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven other passengers in a deadly helicopter crash in Calabasas, California.
The late basketball legend who also shared Natalia, 17, Bianka, 3, and Capri, 7 months, with his wife, Vanessa Bryant, was on his way to a basketball game with Gianna. The former Los Angeles Lakers player coached the teenager’s Athletic Amateur Union team.
“Gianna’s pretty easy to coach,” the Philadelphia native told Entertainment Tonight in 2018. “We haven’t had any issues of a dad-daughter sort of thing. She’s very competitive and she’s a hard worker, so there haven’t been any issues with that.”
The Wizenard Series: Training Camp creator’s second child was not only “hellbent” on playing for the University of Connecticut, but she “for sure” wanted to make it to the WNBA, Kobe told Jimmy Kimmel during an October 2018 appearance.
“The best thing that happens is we’ll go out, and fans will come up to me and she’ll be standing next to me,” the athlete told the host, 52, at the time. “And they’ll be like, ‘Hey, you gotta have a boy. You and Vanessa gotta have a boy to carry on the tradition, the legacy. And she is like, ‘Oy, I got this. You don’t need a boy for that, I got this.’ I’m like, ‘That’s right, you got this.’”
Kobe went on to say that he “absolutely” planned to break down game film with his daughter in the future. He explained, “We try to teach the kids what excellence looks like. We try to give them a foundation of the amount of work that it takes to be excellent. Playing basketball, we’re going to focus on the details. We’re going to learn the basics, learn the fundamentals and do those things over and over.”
Keep scrolling for more details about the father-daughter pair’s tragic accident, from the location of the crash to the helicopter’s safety history.
After taking off from John Wayne Airport, it passed over Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles and circled over Glendale before going down near Las Virgenes Road and Willow Glen Street in Calabasas.
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Authorities received a 911 call reporting the crash at 9:47 a.m.
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The chopper has a strong safety record, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
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“We extend our sincerest condolences to all those affected by today’s Sikorsky S-76B accident in Calabasas, California,” the company tweeted on Sunday. “We have been in contact with the NTSB and stand ready to provide assistance and support to the investigative authorities and our customer.”
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Los Angeles Police Department’s Air Support Division choppers were grounded due to foggy conditions and didn’t depart until later in the afternoon. (Their flight minimums are two miles of visibility and an 800-foot cloud ceiling.)
Spokesman Josh Rubenstein told The Los Angeles Times: “The weather situation did not meet our minimum standards for flying. [The fog] was enough that we were not flying.”
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Because the chemical “reacts with oxygen and water,” the inferno was “very hard to extinguish [and] … stubborn,” L.A. County Fire Chief Daryl Osby explained during a press conference.
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Kobe was scheduled to coach his daughter’s game at his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks on Sunday.
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Baseball coach John Altobelli was among the other crash victims, Orange Coast College confirmed, along with his wife, Keri Altobelli, and their 13-year-old daughter, Alyssa. The teenager played on Gianna’s team. The four remaining people aboard the chopper in Sunday’s crash were later identified as pilot Ara Zobayan, mother-daughter duo, Sarah and Payton Chester, and girls’ basketball coach Christina Mauser.
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“Roughly 100 yards across in each direction,” the Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said of the crash site during a press conference on Sunday evening.
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On top of recovery, which will take a few days to complete as "quickly as possible, safely and thoroughly," the victims' bodies will then be identified and their families notified, Chief Medical Examiner Jonathan Lucas explained at the time.
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The crash site is closed off, so officials are directing mourners to a park about a quarter of a mile away.
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After several stars honored Kobe during the 2020 Grammys on Sunday, sports organizations around the country started to pay tribute to the late athlete. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, a photo of Kobe and Gianna appeared on the side of U.S. Bank Stadium. Madison Square Garden in New York City, meanwhile, was lit up with purple and gold lights with a photo of Kobe on the side of the building. Ryan Seacrest also revealed that a subway sign for Bryant Park was altered to say, “Kobe Bryant Park” on Monday, January 27. Earlier on Sunday, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban announced that the team was retiring Kobe’s No. 24.
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On Tuesday, January 28, the Los Angeles County coroner's office confirmed that the department's Special Operations Response Team (SORT) had found the bodies of all nine victims from the crash. "Their bodies were located, removed from the crash site and transported to the department’s Forensic Science Center," a statement obtained by Us Weekly explained. "Investigators are actively working on identifying the decedents. Additionally, body examinations are in progress."
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In the wake of her husband and daughter’s death, Vanessa paid tribute to them by changing her Instagram icon to a photo of the father-daughter duo on Wednesday, January 29. That same day, she made her Instagram page public again and issued a statement about the tragedy.
“There aren’t enough words to describe our pain right now. I take comfort in knowing that Kobe and Gigi both knew that they were so deeply loved,” she wrote, sharing a photo of the family of five. “We were so incredibly blessed to have them in our lives. I wish they were here with us forever. They were our beautiful blessings taken from us too soon.”
She continued, “I’m not sure what our lives hold beyond today, and it’s impossible to imagine life without them. But we wake up each day, trying to keep pushing because Kobe, and our baby girl, Gigi, are shining on us to light the way. Our love for them is endless — and that’s to say, immeasurable. I just wish I could hug them, kiss them and bless them. Have them here with us, forever.”
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A Calabasas resident obtained audio from the crash through her Google Nest camera, and the footage was later obtained by ABC affiliate KABC-TV on Wednesday. The surveillance video has a timestamp of 9:45 a.m, and the sound of the hillside crash can be heard followed by silence.
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On Wednesday, the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner identified the five remaining victims from the helicopter crash that killed Kobe. After “round-the-clock testing and analysis of DNA,” the coroner’s office confirmed to Us that Gianna, Gianna’s basketball teammate Alyssa and her mother, Keri, basketball coach Mauser, and family friend Chester. The day before, the coroner’s office revealed that Kobe, pilot Zobayan, Alyssa’s father, John, and Payton’s mother, Sarah, were all identified. The cause of death was determined to be blunt trauma.
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