Nearly six months after the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and 7 other people in Calabasas, the National Transportation Safety Board has released what it calls the "public docket" of its ongoing investigation.
The other victims, in addition to Bryant, his daughter, and Ara Zobayan, were Orange Coast College baseball coach John Altobelli, his wife, Keri, and their daughter Alyssa, Sarah Chester and her daughter Payton, and Christina Mauser.
A preliminary analysis of the "public docket" of more than 1,700 pages of interviews, photos and reports indicates the pilot may have become disoriented in clouds and thick fog. During the final high-speed descent, the pilot told air traffic controllers that they were climbing to 4,000 feet when they were actually falling.
The docket includes an air traffic control transmission, in which the pilot told controllers that they were climbing to 4,000 feet, when they were actually descending at a high rate of speed.
The NTSB says any analysis is preliminary and no conclusions can be drawn at this time about the cause of the crash.
"As such, no conclusions about how or why the crash occurred should be drawn from the information within the docket. Analysis, findings, recommendations, and probable cause determinations related to the crash will be issued by the NTSB in a final report at a later date," the NTSB
wrote in its press release Wednesday.
Earlier this month, Vanessa Bryant
showed off a new tattoo of her late husband and daughter. Last month, Bryant
shared a photo of Kobe Bryant wearing an "I Can't Breathe" T-shirt after the 2014 death of Eric Garner by an NYPD officer.
NTSB Opens Public Docket, Wednesday, June 17, 2020, for Investigation of Calabasas, California, Helicopter Crash; https://t.co/AzpvA6e4lN pic.twitter.com/njCCAWelkb
— NTSB_Newsroom (@NTSB_Newsroom)
June 17, 2020 She waded into the George Floyd conversation around injustice and black lives in an Instagram post. George Floyd was the black man who was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer who kept his knee on his neck on May 25. The ex-officer Derek Chauvin had charges brought against him as did the other three police officers on the scene.
Protests and marches broke out across the country, including in Los Angeles, after the death of Floyd.
Autopsy reports were released in May by the LA County Medical Examiner-Coroner's office regarding the victims in the helicopter crash that killed Bryant, his daughter and seven others.
The causes of the deaths of Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and the seven others was blunt trauma, according to the LA Medical Examiner Twitter feed.
The LA Medical Examiner report said, "The manner of death was certified as accident."
The autopsy on the pilot, Ara Zobayan, showed he didn't have any drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of the crash.
Bryant and the eight others died Jan. 26 when their helicopter crashed in heavy fog in Calabasas. They were on their way to a tournament at the academy.
Bryant and his daughter were given a farewell memorial at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles in February. Bryant, Kobe's wife and widow, also filed a lawsuit against the helicopter company, Island Express, alleging negligence.
As recently as last month, family of the pilot, Ara Zobayan, said Bryant knew the risks of flying in a helicopter.
Autopsy reports for the #Calabasas helicopter crash victims released https://t.co/MSDIX3Rct1
— LA County Medical Examiner-Coroner (@lacountymec)
May 15, 2020
