Scott Daehlin is not a name you know, but you will remember for what he provided in the wake of Kobe Bryant’s death.
The Calabasas resident and sound engineer was on sight to witness what happened before Kobe Bryant’s Sikorsky S-76B helicopter crashed into the hills of Calabasas, California just before 10:00 a.m. local time.
Daehlin remembers taking a break from setting up sound for a service at Church of the Canyon, which is below the crash site, when he heard the helicopter overheard.
“Because of its proximity to the ground, I knew something was wrong. It was hovering real low, like they were searching to land. It was making a slow left turn. It was about 9:44 a.m., and then the impact happened. I heard a crunch. I don’t think it pancaked. I think it hit rotors first,” Daehlin said “I immediately called 911.”
The helicopter that carried Bryant was a 1991 Sikorsky S-76B built in 1991. It had the tail number N72EX.
He continued..
“My alarm bells went off because I thought, ‘This is awfully low,’” the sound engineer said, estimating it was “100, 150 feet” above him, yet invisible in the dense fog and low clouds.
“It was not very loud. You could hear the crushing, collapsing of fiberglass, Plexiglas,” he said, adding the “rotors stopped literally immediately” without an explosion.
“It just all stopped,” he said. “So however the impact happened, it ended very, very quickly.
“I hope that the occupants didn’t suffer because it was very, very quick.”
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Daehlin also stated it was his belief that pilot Ara Zobayan “was just disoriented and did not know where he was” because the visibility in the region was so poor.
