Pictures Emerge Showing Kobe Bryant’s Helicopter In Ball Of Fire

Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others died in a helicopter crash Sunday. The helicopter exploded in a ball of fire after hitting into an LA hillside. Bryant and Gianna were traveling with college baseball coach John Altobelli, his daughter Alyssa Altobelli and wife, Keri Altobelli, girls’ basketball coach Christina Mauser, mom Sarah Chester and her 13-year-old daughter, Payton Chester and Ara Zobayan.

A random man caught the crash on his camera. The Sikorsky S-76B crashed around 9:45 a.m.

“Out of the fog came a helicopter and it slammed into the mountainside about 200 feet from where we were standing,” said the man. “We were close enough that we could feel the air from the propellers. There was a huge fireball. One of the helicopter doors landed about 10 to 15 feet away from us. Helicopter parts were flying everywhere. There was very little left of the helicopter.”

The man and his friend went to the remains to see if someone needed help. Unfortunately, there were no survivors.

“We didn’t realize that Kobe Bryant was in the helicopter until we got back down to the parking lot,” he explained. “Just the fact that a whole helicopter full of people crashed was shocking to us.”

The deadly ball of fire

Pilot Zobayan had asked for a “special visual flight rules” clearance to fly by sight in terrible visibility in the controlled airspace.

Zobayan was flying at 1,400 feet and hit the Calabasas hills.

“We are not just focusing on weather,” Jennifer Homendy, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said Monday. “We look at man, machine and the environment, and the weather is just a small portion of that.”

According to radar data, the helicopter climbed to 2,300 feet and switched to a left descending turn. There’s no black box and it wasn’t required to have one.

The entire nation mourns the loss of the basketball legend. Athletes, coaches, fans, friends and family members pay tribute to Bryant, his lovely girl and the rest of the victims. We send our thoughts and prayers to their families. It will be really hard to get over this loss.

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