The tall hillside where Los Angeles Lakers basketball great Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others perished in a helicopter crash was cleared on Tuesday of all wreckage and human remains as the on-scene phase of the investigation drew to a close.
A US National Transportation Safety Board team carted a truckload of debris wrapped in large, white tarp bags to a secure location, while authorities said they had positively identified remains of four victims, including Bryant and the pilot.
Disclosing new details of Sunday’s tragedy, board member Jennifer Homendy also said the pilot of Bryant’s luxury passenger helicopter had tried to climb out of a cloud layer before the chopper banked sharply and plunged 610m per minute into the hillside.
Photo: National Transportation Safety Board via AP
“This is a pretty steep descent at high speed,” Homendy told a briefing in Calabasas, a town adjacent to the crash scene about 64km northwest of downtown Los Angeles. “The time from descent to impact was probably about a minute.”
Crash investigators have offered no explanation for what might have led the twin-engine Sikorsky S-76B to bank abruptly to one side and then plummet to the ground.
However, Homendy said the estimated rate of descent “wouldn’t be a normal landing speed.”
Homendy has suggested that clouds, fog and limited visibility in the area were a key focus of the investigation, having appealed to the public on Monday to come forward with any photographs and videos that might document weather conditions around the crash site at the time.
She said that many images had since been provided to the agency and would be analyzed in due course.
Bryant, 41, who retired from the National Basketball Association in 2016, was on his way to a youth sports academy with his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. Her team that he coached was due to compete that day in a girls’ basketball tournament, when the crash occurred.
Board officials gave a private telephone briefing to the families of the dead on Tuesday afternoon, but Homendy declined to say anything about what was discussed and who took part in the call.
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