City of Angels gets nine more

LOS ANGELES: The bodies of all nine passengers aboard the helicopter that crashed carrying basketball legend Kobe Bryant in California have now been recovered.

The crash took the lives of Bryant and his daughter, Gianna, 13, (pictured) along with the pilot and six others.

The former LA Lakers great was on his way to his youth basketball camp in Thousand Oaks, when the helicopter went down in heavy fog.

Also on board was married couple John and Keri Altobelli with their teenage daughter Alyssa, 13.

Mother and daughter

Sarah and Payton Chester, 13, were also killed in the crash along with basketball coach Christina Mauser, 38, and pilot Ara Zobayan.

Coroner’s investigators were able to recover three bodies in Calabasas on the day of the crash while the remaining six were located and recovered on Monday.

Late on Tuesday the coroner’s office confirmed the identities of the victims.

National Transportation Safety Board member Jennifer Homendy said the helicopter was descending at a rate of more than 2000 feet a minute before the crash in a “high-energy impact”.

Ms Homendy noted that the Sikorsky S-76B did not have a “terrain awareness and warning system” which can provide aural and visual alerts to the pilot if the aircraft gets too close to the ground.

She said that in 2004, the NTSB had recommended all helicopters with six or more seats be outfitted with a TAWS.

A preliminary report into the cause of the crash is expected within 10 days.

The debris field from the crash extends about

150-180m.

Investigators have asked the public to send photos that show weather conditions in the area on Sunday. Radio transmissions indicate that the pilot was trying to get above the cloud layer just before the crash.

Mr Zobayan had radioed the tower to request “flight following” — a system for tracking aircraft from the tower — but the controller advised that he was too low. According to radar data, the pilot climbed before doing a left descending turn, and crashing into the hillside.

Shaquille O’Neal tearfully said yesterday he never could have imagined anything like Bryant’s death, remembering his former teammate as a great player.

“The fact that we lost probably the world’s greatest Laker, the world’s greatest basketball player is just — listen, people are going to say take your time and get better, but this is going to be hard for me,” O’Neal said.

“I already don’t sleep anyway, but I’ll figure it out.

“I never could have imagined nothing like this.”

We lost probably the world’s greatest Laker Shaquille O’Neal