Vanessa Bryant, widow of basketball idol Kobe Bryant, filed a lawsuit for reckless homicide on Monday against the company that operated the helicopter in which she died along with her 13-year-old daughter and seven others. 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, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The news of the lawsuit came while Bryant fans, artists and colleagues celebrated a massive funeral at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, where he played his entire career with Los Angeles Lakers.
On January 26, shortly before 10 in the morning, Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, 13, two companions of her and five other adults died immediately after crashing the helicopter in which they were traveling to a game of basketball the girls were going to play. The pilot, Ara Zobayan, had a lot of experience and usually 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 Island Express Helicopters and Island Express Holding Corp. are responsible for reckless homicide because the pilot did not "put the care required to pilot the aircraft," according to the Times . The accident and deaths were "a direct consequence of Zobayan's negligence" and the company is "indirectly responsible for all purposes." The lawsuit does not specify a specific amount of compensation.
The causes of the accident, which shocked Los Angeles and the entire world of basketball, 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 with low visibility, so Zobayan asked for help to control towers of airports north of Los Angeles, a usual maneuver. The preliminary report of the US Transportation Security Authority (NTSB) ruled out in principle mechanical failures in the helicopter.
The investigation, at least informally, focuses on the pilot's decisions. In the last minutes of the flight, Zobayan informed the control tower that it was about to rise above the cloud cover. After rising rapidly, it began to descend at great speed turning left until it crashed violently against a mountain in Calabasas, north of Los Angeles. Speculation about the accident focuses on the possible disorientation of the pilot in these last moments.
The lawsuit comes two days after the Los Angeles Times published that Zobayan had been reprimanded in 2015 by the federal aviation agency (FAA) for a violation of air regulations. Zobayan wanted to cross the airspace of the Los Angeles International Airport in low visibility conditions. The tower denied him permission to do so and he proceeded anyway.
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