Remembering the Nine Lives Lost in the Devastating Kobe Bryant Helicopter Crash

Not even 4 weeks into January, we had been hit with the information all of us assumed can be among the many worst we’d hear in 2020. And even after greater than a 12 months of loss and grief, isolation and nervousness, the occasions of Jan. 26, 2020, nonetheless really feel overwhelmingly heartbreaking.

The devastation got here in waves on that Sunday morning 24 months in the past. What felt unbelievable at first—{that a} large like Kobe Bryant might be taken from us on the age of 41—solely grew to become extra unimaginable because the hours wore on. 

By nighttime, as celebrities poured into Los Angeles’ Staples Middle, the location of that night’s Grammys and the spot the place the NBA legend had spent his prolific 20-season profession, the items had been coming collectively: Simply earlier than 10 a.m., a helicopter making the 85-mile journey from Orange County’s John Wayne Airport to the Mamba Sports activities Academy close to Thousand Oaks, Calif., for a youth basketball match had crashed into the hills of Calabasas. All 9 passengers aboard died immediately.