January 29. 2020

Los Angeles resident Ronna Leavitt's doorcam (camera in the doorbell) recorded audio of the helicopter carrying Los Angeles Lakers basketball star and Academy Award winning movie producer, Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna Bryant, and their friends, before it crashed into the side of a hill in Calabasas.

Glendale resident David Lyudmirsky also captured video of the helicopter circling his home and others. It is estimated the helicopter was only 700-feet above the ground. Lyudmirsky stated on Twitter, "I try and video /photograph all the weird stuff happening above my house in Glendale, CA. Unfortunately this morning I didn’t realize I was filming the helicopter Kobe Bryant, his daughter and others were in 31 minutes before they crashed . RIP."

A witness to the crash, Scott Daehlin, who called 911, stated to a reporter, "My alarm bells went off because I thought 'This is awfully low...there was no explosion in the sky...just a thump." The helicopter exploded when it hit the ground.

Daehlin also stated, "I hope that the occupants didn't suffer because it was very, very, quick." For a helicopter to hit a solid object while traveling at 153MPH should have made death instantaneous. After all, there are car crashes where vehicles were going half as fast while crashing and the occupants of the car died on impact.

The Los Angeles coroner's office also listed the cause of death for Kobe Bryant, pilot Ara Zobayan, former college baseball coach John Altobelli, and Sarah Chester, as "blunt trauma." They did not indicate fire played a role in their deaths, meaning they did not burn to death, as some have speculated.

Daehlin's description matched that of Leavitt's account of the incident. Leavitt stated helicopter made a u-turn before crashing into the hillside. Leavitt's doorcam picked up the loud noises the helicopter made shortly before crashing. The audio reveals the chopper was flying low. At the end of the audio there is a loud thud which is the sound of the helicopter crashing into the hillside. NTSB representative Jennifer Homendy stated, "We are not just focusing on weather. We look at man, machine and the environment, and weather is just a small portion of that."

Victims of the helicopter crash

It is true that one can tell when an aircraft is flying too low. It no longer becomes background noise of a plane flying high in the sky. For example, yesterday in Miami I heard military type jets flying low over my home. The engine noise was loud and did not sound like a commercial airliner. However, they were preparing for the Super Bowl. So in that context it is fine. However, when a helicopter is flying over one's home low and loud, it will catch your attention and be cause for concern, as in the Kobe Bryant incident.

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