Vanessa mourns Kobe Bryant's 'senseless' death on 4th anniversary of his NBA retirement: 'Life truly isn't fair'
On the four-year anniversary of Kobe Bryant's NBA sendoff, his wife Vanessa Bryant looked back on her late husband's retirement and mourned the loss of the Los Angeles Lakers star and their 13-year-old daughter Gianna.
Kobe and Gianna died in a helicopter crash on January 26 which killed nine people. Vanessa took to Instagram to share a video of Kobe from his last game and wrote, "My husband worked his ass off for 20 years. Gave it his all."
"All he wanted was to spend time with our girls and me to make up for lost time. He wanted to be there for every single milestone and special moment in our girls' lives," she added. Vanessa and Kobe shared four daughters together — Natalia, 17; Gianna; Bianka, 3; and Capri who is 9 months old.
"He only got to enjoy 3 years and 9 months of retirement. We had 2 more daughters, he won an Oscar, he opened Granity studios, he became a 5x best selling author and coached Gianna's basketball team in that time," she continued in the post.
She also shared that her daughter Gianna "worked hard and gave her all 7 days a week just like her daddy". She also referred to the fact that Kobe and Gianna were on their way to one of her basketball games on the same day that they died.
"I wish I could go back to that morning, every day," she continued. "I wish they had a normal local game on 1/26. Life truly isn’t fair. This is just senseless."
On April 12, Vanessa shared some photographs of her Easter celebration with Natalia, Bianka and Capri while she continued to celebrate Kobe's accomplishments after his tragic death.
Earlier this month, she was seen getting emotional and choking up when it was revealed that Kobe was being inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. "We wish that he was here with us to celebrate, but it’s definitely the peak of his NBA career, and every accomplishment that he had as an athlete was a stepping stone to be here," she shared on April 4.
"We are incredibly proud of him, and there’s some solace in knowing that he was probably going to be a part of the 2020 Hall of Fame class," she added.
The helicopter's pilot, Ara Zobayan, was reportedly told that he was flying too low only moments before he crashed the chopper into a hillside while attempting to navigate dense fog. The pilot had made the decision to fly out when most air traffic had been grounded due to bad weather.
The pilot was flying under "special visual flight rules", which permit traveling in poor weather conditions without relying on the electronic instruments of an aircraft. However, reports state that even under those rules, pilots are required to remain below clouds to maintain visual contact with the ground.
Among the victims were Bryant, his daughter Gianna, college baseball coach John Altobelli, his wife Keri and their daughter Alyssa (a friend of Gianna's), Sarah and Payton Chester, and one of the coaches at Kobe's youth academy, Christina Mauser, who was married to Tijuana Dogs singer Matt Mauser.