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The atmosphere remains bleak 24 hours after the tragedy. In Los Angeles there is no talk of anything other than the death of Kobe Bryant . Horacio Nolasco, a lifelong follower of the Lakers, arrives at his office in the southeast of the city with a serious countenance and after greeting he acknowledges being dejected. «How will I be after such a tragedy? If it hurt when Magic [Johnson] announced that he had AIDS, imagine how I feel about Kobe's death. It breaks your heart just thinking about it. It was a huge example for everyone ».

In the background, televisions collect the informative momentum of local networks with specials about the goodbye of basketball genius, waiting for more data to clarify the circumstances of his death. At the moment it is known that Bryant's last helicopter flight lasted 41 minutes, which left John Wayne Airport , near his home in Newport Beach, at 9:06 in the morning, and that he intended to reach the Mamba Academy that had founded in Thousands Oaks, northwest of Los Angeles.

There his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, who also died in the accident, had to play a basketball game at two in the afternoon in front of a Fresno team. However, the bad weather conditions complicated the trip, forcing the apparatus to turn for a quarter of an hour over the area of ​​the city zoo , near the Burbank airport, due to the dense fog, and then on the way to the area of Thousand Oaks and crashing on a hill of Calabasas, a nearby town.

The unknowns

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) lead the investigation, to which the FBI has also joined. Those inquiries should clarify several questions: why did Bryant decide to fly if conditions were dangerous to do so, in the middle of a thick fog that left several helicopters on the sheriff's office that morning? Why didn't you try to land in Burbank and avoid the catastrophe? And why did they accept to fly with a special permit in those conditions despite the fact that the former Lakers escort cared, above all, for the safety of the helicopter he used often? Many unknowns that probably cannot be resolved within several weeks.

The authorities dealing with the case in the accident zone.

What has transpired is that they left Newport Beach County with that special permit despite the bad weather and that in the final minutes, in addition to flying lower than normal, the ship made a sharp turn before rushing against the ground . According to sources cited by the ESPN chain, the device, a Sikorsky S-76C with N72EX license plate, fell from a height of about 700 meters , causing the death of its nine occupants shortly before 9.47 in the morning, when the services emergency received the first call alerting the event. The first leaks of the researchers point to fog as the main cause.

Three bodies recovered

In addition to Bryant and his daughter, John Altobelli , 56, a baseball coach with a long career in Orange County, his wife Keri and daughter Alyssa , also 13, and a basketball teammate were traveling in the Sikorsky of 1991 from Gianna Bryant.

The girls' basketball coach, Christina Mauser , who also served as an assistant for a women's team at Orange County Harbor Day School, also lost her life. Her husband, Matt Mauser , turned to Facebook to express her pain. "My children and I are devastated," he wrote. The other broken family are the Chester, Sarah and Payton , mother and daughter who also traveled to the basketball game with the Bryant, a blow that was felt strongly in the community where they lived, San Juan Capistrano. Ara Zobayan was the pilot of the device.

Authorities have reported that three of the bodies have already been recovered. And work continues in the area.

The manifestations of pain and solidarity for the death of Bryant and the rest of the passengers have not ceased since the news was known. In Los Angeles, in addition to the constant pilgrimage of citizens to the vicinity of the Staples Center, adorned with altars of flowers and candles, the city dawned with a new mural dedicated to Kobe and her daughter Gianna, the work of local artist Jules Muck . It will take time to dissipate mourning and pain.

A tribute mural at Pickford Market in Los Angeles.USA TODAY

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