It’s been five months since NBA legend Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash with his 13 year-old daughter Gianna as well as seven others. Now, tragic new details about the hours leading up to the crash have come to light.

Daily Mail reported that an investigation has concluded that Bryant himself sadly made the fatal decision to move his helicopter flight 45 minutes earlier, from 9:45 to 9am, so that he could watch an earlier basketball game. This was confirmed by his personal assistant Cate Brady, who had worked with Bryant and his family since May of 2019.

“That particular day, for Sunday, I actually changed the time the night before, probably around 6:00 or 7:00p.m., because Bryant had decided he wanted to go to watch another team play before his game,” Brady told crash investigators. “So it was supposed to be a 9:45 departure, but the night before we changed it to a 9:00a.m. departure.”

The crash occurred just before 10am after pilot Ara Zobayan became disoriented in the dense fog. Just 45 minutes after the crash, the fog had lifted and the California hillside was much more visible, meaning the helicopter likely would have been able to fly easily had they left at the original time.

Brady made sure to add, however, that the Bryant family never put pressure on the helicopter company to fly.

“Would Kobe or – and his people push back and give you a hard time and send you back to Patti asking, why can’t we fly? Or push to get the flight done?” asked Garret Dalton, Director of Operations at Island Express Helicopters.

“I don’t want to answer that question because it’s never occurred,” Brady responded. “If there was an issue, I have been Kobe’s assistant for long enough to volunteer to drive him. But we’ve never had that happen, so I don’t know the exact answer to that.”

Seconds before the crash, Zobayan radioed air traffic control to say that he was climbing to 4,000 ft to break through the clouds, but in reality, he was plummeting to the ground.

“Calculated apparent angles at this time show that the pilot could have misperceived both pitch and roll angles,” one NTSB report said. “During the final descent the pilot, responding to (air traffic control), stated that they were ‘climbing to four thousand.'”

Everyone onboard was killed in the tragic crash.

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