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Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Kobe Bryant Death: Live Updates as All 9 Bodies Recovered From Helicopter Crash - The New York Times

Credit...Kyle Grillot for The New York Times

Ever since the authorities reached the rugged hillside near Calabasas, Calif., where a helicopter came crashing down Sunday morning, investigators have been meticulously combing the crash site, using drone technology to survey the scene and manpower to delicately pick through the strewn, charred wreckage.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County coroner’s office announced that the remains of all nine people who died in the crash had been recovered. The N.B.A. legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven other people were on board, flying to a youth basketball tournament.

Three of the bodies were recovered on Sunday afternoon, officials said, but it took another day to locate the remaining six.

The authorities said they were working to positively identify each set of remains. They have yet to release an official list of the victims, but the names of all nine have been confirmed by relatives and associates.

There was no flight data or cockpit voice recorder in the helicopter when it crashed according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

“There wasn’t a black box, and there isn’t a requirement to have a black box” on this helicopter, Jennifer Homendy, a member of the N.T.S.B., said at a news conference on Monday.

But there was an iPad in the helicopter that included the ForeFlight application, which pilots use while in the air to review flight plans, monitor weather briefings and more, she said. Investigators would review the iPad and other evidence recovered from the crash site, which extended about 500 to 600 feet away from the center of the wreckage.

“It was a pretty devastating accident scene,” Homendy said.

During the flight on Sunday morning, the fog was so thick that the pilot had to get special visual clearance from air traffic controllers before continuing on the route.

The Los Angeles Police Department had grounded its helicopters, but the pilot was licensed to fly in inclement weather and continued toward Bryant’s Mamba Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

The helicopter lost contact with controllers at 9:45 a.m., and two minutes later, witnesses called 911 and reported hearing the sound of whirring blades and a fire on the hillside. The aircraft had smashed into a hill at 1,085 feet.

The investigation, which the N.T.S.B. is leading, will include a review of all conditions, including weather, Homendy said.

“We look at man, machine and the environment, and weather is just a small portion of that,” she said, adding that investigators would review records and evidence tied to the pilot, his company, the helicopter and its instruments, and more.

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The retired N.B.A. star, 41, was among the passengers in a helicopter that went down in Calabasas, Calif.CreditCredit...Hannah Yoon for The New York Times

The Lakers, Bryant’s former team, were scheduled to play their crosstown rivals the Clippers on Tuesday night, but the N.B.A. said that the game would be postponed. The Lakers are next scheduled to play Friday night, hosting the Portland Trail Blazers at Staples Center.

About 40 miles south in Costa Mesa, Calif., Orange Coast College said it would go ahead with the opening day of its baseball season on Tuesday. The home game, against Southwestern College, was scheduled to start at 2 p.m.

Orange Coast’s longtime head baseball coach, John Altobelli, known as Alto, was killed in the helicopter crash, along with his wife, Keri, and a daughter, Alyssa.

In an interview, a pitching coach, Tim Matz, said the members of the team had decided to play the season opener as scheduled.

“They as a group said, ‘No, Alto would want us out there,’” Mr. Matz said.

On Monday night, LeBron James posted a tribute to Bryant and his daughter Gianna on Instagram, saying he was “heartbroken and devastated.” He referred to Bryant as his brother.

“Man I sitting here trying to write something for this post but 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 added, “My heart goes to Vanessa and the kids. I promise you I’ll continue your legacy man!”

On Sunday, footage emerged of James and other Lakers teammates coming off the team plane and embracing one another. Bryant’s death came the day after James passed him on the N.B.A.’s all-time scoring list.

Separated in age by just six years, the men were friends and regarded as the heirs to Michael Jordan. Their ties had been nurtured over close to two decades, ever since the day in 2002 when Bryant and James met in Philadelphia. The next year, with the league more comfortable with the notion of signing a player straight out of high school thanks to Bryant’s success, James entered the draft.

They eventually played alongside each other in the Olympics and were fierce rivals when they played for opposing teams in the N.B.A. But especially once Bryant retired and James moved to Los Angeles, they were known to share hugs and jokes in public.

Bryant’s last Twitter post before his death was a message congratulating James, who had just passed him on the N.B.A.’s career scoring list. Much respect my brother,” he wrote.

John Ireland, the radio play-by-play announcer for the Lakers, was aboard a transcontinental flight with the team on Sunday when word of Bryant’s death reached the jet.

At first, he recalled on Monday, he thought a tweet about Bryant’s death was the result of a social media hacking. Then he saw the TMZ report that broke the news, and soon after, members of the team’s security staff confirmed the fatal helicopter crash.

“Everybody became inconsolable,” Ireland said on his radio show on 710 AM in Los Angeles. “Whole plane was crying, praying that we somehow had it wrong or, because we were in a confined space, that somebody was playing a very elaborate, well-executed practical joke.”

It fell to Frank Vogel, the head coach, to tell the players, Ireland said. The rest of the long flight, he suggested, passed in an emotional daze.

“I don’t remember the rest of the flight after that,” he said. “We still had like three and a half hours left. I just remember learning about it, sitting there, watching everybody crying.”

Fans looking to purchase Kobe Bryant merchandise might be out of luck.

A search for Bryant products on Nike’s website on Tuesday turned up only a yellow-and-purple Nike gift card, bearing the Los Angeles Lakers logo.

Some news outlets reported that Nike had pulled all Bryant gear in the wake of his death on Sunday, but a Nike spokesman said Tuesday that it had all sold out as normal online. Nike would not say whether the sold-out products would be restocked, or what would happen to planned releases of apparel tied to the star.

Bryant wore the first of his signature shoes during the 2005-6 season, which included the game where he scored 81 points. Nike also helped popularize his nickname, The Black Mamba, in ads.

Mark Parker, the longtime chief executive of Nike who recently stepped down while remaining on the board, said in a statement Tuesday that Bryant thoughtfully pushed the company into new territory on its projects, but also had genuine curiosity about other pursuits.

“He was fascinated with the process of how others became great in all facets of society. While some will remember that as his competitive side, I always saw a sincere passion for learning,” Parker said. “He wanted to know — because life for Kobe was about constant progression and improvement.”

In one of the last media interviews Bryant gave before the crash, he credited Jeanne Mastriano, one of his high school teachers, with planting the seed for one of his post-basketball interests: the written word.

“She was so good and so passionate about what she was teaching about writing and storytelling,” Bryant told USA Today last week. “She firmly believed that storytelling could change the world. She opened my eyes to this passion I didn’t know existed.”

Bryant developed a lasting friendship with Mastriano, who is still teaching at his alma mater, Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pa.

“That trust developed, and it never faltered,” Mastriano said in a telephone interview late Monday. “We managed to get through lots of years, and really were there for each other.”

To announce his retirement from pro basketball at the end of the 2015-2016 N.B.A. season, Kobe Bryant composed a poem, “Dear Basketball,” as a farewell letter to the game he loved. The animator and director Glen Keane transmuted it into an Academy Award-winning short film, with Bryant reading his poem aloud and a musical score by John Williams.

Before Bryant’s death, trailers for the film could be viewed easily online, but not the film itself, The Los Angeles Times reported, after the streaming platform that hosted the film shut down in 2018.

That was remedied on Monday by Bryant’s multimedia company, Granity Studios, which produced the film. Granity posted the full film on Vimeo and on the dearbasketball.com website, which had previously hosted only the trailer.

The pilot on board the helicopter, Ara Zobayan, learned to fly in 1998, after taking a sightseeing flight over the Grand Canyon. He was certified not only to fly under instrument conditions — navigating with the use of instruments — but also to teach other pilots seeking to obtain their own instrument ratings. And he had no accidents or enforcement actions on his record according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

So pilots who knew Zobayan were perplexed by the crash, describing him as an experienced and meticulous operator. He had flown Bryant many times before.

“Supercautious, supersmart,” an instructor said. “I can’t see him making this kind of mistake.”

Reporting was contributed by Dave Phillips, Tim Arango, Louis Keene, Alan Blinder, Sarah Mervosh, Kevin Draper, Patrick J. Lyons and Scott Cacciola.

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Kobe Bryant Death: Live Updates as All 9 Bodies Recovered From Helicopter Crash - The New York Times
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