Vanessa Bryant, the widow of basketball idol Kobe Bryant, filed a wrongful death lawsuit on Monday against the company that operated the helicopter in which she died along with her 13-year-old daughter and seven other people. The accident that cost them their lives on January 26 on a mountain north of Los Angeles was a “direct consequence of the pilot’s negligence”, Vanessa Bryant’s lawyers argue, according to reports. Los Angeles Times.
News of the lawsuit came as Bryant’s fans, artists and teammates held a massive funeral at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where he played his entire career with the Los Angeles Lakers.
On January 26, shortly before 10 in the morning, Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, two of her companions and five other adults were killed instantly when the helicopter in which they were traveling to a match of basketball that the girls were going to play. The pilot, Ara Zobayan, was very experienced and regularly flew with Bryant. That morning there was a lot of fog over Los Angeles and very poor visibility conditions, to the point that the police and the sheriff decided not to take out their helicopters.
The lawsuit ensures that the company Island Express Helicopters and Island Express Holding Corp. are responsible for reckless homicide because the pilot did not “take the required care to pilot the aircraft,” according to the statement. Times. The accident and deaths were “a direct consequence of Zobayan’s negligence” and the company is “indirectly responsible for all intents and purposes.” The lawsuit does not specify a specific amount of compensation.
The causes of the accident, which shocked Los Angeles and the entire basketball world, are still under investigation. The pilot had very little room for maneuver between the ground and the cloud cover. The helicopter, a 1991 Sikorsky S-76B, was in perfect condition. It lacked systems to fly by instruments in low visibility, so Zobayan called for help from the control towers of the airports north of Los Angeles, a common maneuver. The preliminary report of the US Transportation Safety Authority (NTSB) ruled out mechanical failures in the helicopter in principle.
The investigation, at least informally, focuses on the pilot’s decisions. In the last minutes of the flight, Zobayan informed the control tower that he was preparing to rise above the cloud cover. After rising rapidly, it began to descend at high speed turning left until it crashed violently into a mountain in Calabasas, north of Los Angeles. Speculation about the accident focuses on the possible disorientation of the pilot in those last moments.
The lawsuit comes two days after the Los Angeles Times reported that Zobayan had been reprimanded in 2015 by the federal aviation agency (FAA) for a violation of air regulations. Zobayan wanted to traverse the airspace of Los Angeles International Airport in low visibility conditions. The tower denied him permission to do so and he proceeded anyway.