Kobe Bryant death: 911 caller says helicopter crash that killed NBA star was 'over in a quarter second'
The helicopter crash that killed basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and seven others in Calabasas, California, was over within a "quarter second," according to witness reports.
Scott Daehlin, 61, was the first to contact the authorities to report the tragic crash and told People that he had been on his way to his van to grab a pair of headphones before a musical rehearsal at a local church when he heard the helicopter almost directly above his head at around 9:41 am.
He said the cloud deck was "much lower" to the ground than normal, and that the conditions were not like anything he'd seen during the years he had stayed in the area. "Probably the cloud base was about 300 feet," he said. "I think another local resident who lived here 17 years in these condos said he’d never seen the fog and low clouds this thick."
He revealed that, despite the helicopter flying so low, he "didn't hear any anomalies with the engine" and that it "seemed to be running fine," though he did say it seemed as if the pilot was looking for a place to land.
However, in the next 15-20 seconds, everything went wrong, and the helicopter crashed, taking with it all the nine lives on board. "All of a sudden I hear impact, crash, breaking fibreglass, plexiglass. It was over in a quarter second. Just went quiet," he said, adding the rotors "immediately stopped" spinning.
He suggested that the crash might be down to the poor "visibility," a theory seemingly supported by flight tracker data which showed that the helicopter did encounter bad weather when it was above the LA Zoo.
The helicopter reportedly circled the area multiple times at a very low altitude of 875 feet, with the pilot even contacting the control tower at the Burbank airport around 9:30 am PT. It then encountered more bad weather as it headed towards a mountainous area, where it eventually crashed into a mountain at 1,700 feet.
Another Calabasas resident, Matt Graham, who lives a quarter-mile from where the crash occurred, also backed Daehlin and told People the visibility was very poor because "it was so foggy."
"I was sitting on my couch when I heard it go over our roof. I thought to myself, 'Wow they’re flying really low today,'" he said. "It must’ve been about 100 feet above our roof by the way the house was shaking."
"About five minutes later I heard there was a report of a plane that went down, then I started hearing sirens," he continued. "Moments later reports that it was a helicopter started coming out. It was just so foggy out. I’ve never seen anything like it. If anyone says that they actually saw it (the crash), they’re lying. Nobody could see anything because it was so foggy."