One year ago today, the world stopped as news circulated of a helicopter crash outside of Los Angeles that killed Lakers great Kobe Bryant , his year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others.
Sports commentators cried on live television. Fans and mourners descended upon Staples Center. NBA teams took second shot-clock violations in honor of his number.
In the year since, a pandemic arrived, protests started over racial injustice and a new president was inaugurated. But even amid so much change, people are taking time to remember the lives lost on a hillside in Calabasas. I miss you, hermano Forever in our hearts. We all miss you Kobe pic. Kobe was so much more than just a basketball player and he was destined for even more greatness. The last time I saw Kobe Bryant, it was the happiest I had ever seen him.
Celebrating his life today, and feeling grateful to have known him. Gone but never forgotten. A post shared by Paul George ygtrece.
One year ago we lost a friend and a brother. Appreciate Kobe and who he was as a man and a person. He pushed entire lakers team to be the best version the team could be. MambaForever pic. Rest In Peace Kobe. I send my prayers and thoughts to the family and loved ones of Kobe Bryant. RIP to one of the greatest competitors the world has ever known. His legacy of hard work, skill, and dedication will live on forever. The Mamba Mentality lives on. A post shared by Kevin Love kevinlove.
A post shared by Common common. The helicopter did, however, lack two notable components. It did not have a flight recorder, colloquially known as a "black box," that could have provided additional data for investigators.
Nor did it have a terrain awareness and warning system, known as TAWS, which notifies pilots when they get dangerously close to the ground. One witness told the NTSB that she was preparing to meet a friend for a hike at a nearby trailhead when she saw a helicopter disappear into clouds that were obscuring the tops of trees. Another witness reached out to the investigators to advise them that the area near the crash is "predisposed to channel fog up from the coast.
The weather on the morning of the crash has become a key component of the NTSB's investigation. Its meteorological report spans pages and includes satellite images, surface observations, photos, maps and other assorted data. Investigators even compared footage from cameras in the area, perched behind home plate at three youth baseball fields, to estimate visibility at the time of the crash.
The weather was also a topic of conversation among Bryant's travel coordinating team prior to take-off. Zobayan, the pilot, fielded inquiries about it via text message the night before the flight and the morning of. Pilots typically fly under visual flight rules, where they can see where they're going, or instrument flight rules, where they primarily rely on the aircraft's instruments because their vision is obscured.
But the conditions that morning prompted Zobayan to take off under special visual flight rules, a sort of middle ground between the two. The weather that morning has also been at the center of multiple lawsuits filed by Bryant's wife, Vanessa, and the other victims' families against the helicopter company and Zobayan's estate.
The families argue that Zobayan should not have flown in adverse conditions, and that Island Express Helicopters should have had regulations in place to prevent him from doing so. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and Los Angeles Police Department later said low clouds and fog in the area had prompted them to ground their own helicopters on the morning of the crash.
Zobayan, 50, first became interested in flying when he emigrated from Lebanon in the s, his girlfriend of seven years told investigators. He got his private pilot certificate in and had flown more than 8, hours at the time of the crash, including 1, in the Sikorsky S For several years, Zobayan was one of only two pilots who flew Bryant for Island Express Helicopters, according to Deetz, who was the other.
Zobayan was reprimanded once by the FAA , in , for flying into busy airspace without clearance. He was counseled on the incident but not required to undergo any remedial training.
Investigators have questioned whether Zobayan became spatially disoriented in the fog just before the crash. Read More. The "Celebration of Life" is set to begin at 10 a.
Bryant wore the number 24 in the latter part of his NBA career, while Gianna wore the number 2 for her youth basketball teams. View this post on Instagram.
Where is it? The memorial will be held at the Staples Center, where Bryant played for the Los Angeles Lakers and where his fans gathered to comfort each another after his death, building a makeshift monument out of flowers, letters, basketballs and jerseys.
The arena has hosted large-scale memorials in the past, most recently for rapper Nipsey Hussle last April. Hide Caption. The last game the two attended was on December 29, , when the Lakers faced the Dallas Mavericks. Serbia's Novak Djokovic gets emotional as he talks about Kobe Bryant after winning a men's singles quarter-final match against Canada's Milos Raonic on day nine of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January Notes are seen on a wall with painted portraits of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna outside the "House of Kobe" basketball court on January 28 in Valenzuela, Metro Manila, Philippines.
Coco Gauff pays tribute to Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna, with their names hand-written on her tennis tennis shoes during her Australian Open doubles tennis match on January Fans place flowers at a makeshift memorial outside of the Staples Center in Los Angeles on January Nicole Mascarenhas wipes her eyes in front of the Staples Center on January Children play with paper balls and a trash can in front of a makeshift memorial on January A group of fans gathered at the LA Live Plaza and took turns shooting paper balls into the trash can while yelling "Kobe," a gesture practiced in classrooms and offices across America.
A spectator at the Australian open wears a Kobe Bryant jersey on January
0コメント