As more details surface surrounding the crash that claimed the lives of Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna along with the pilot, Gianna’s teammates, and their parents, everyone is turning their focus to Vanessa Bryant, who has yet to comment on the devastating loss of her husband and daughter.
Sources close to the grieving widow paint a heartbreaking picture of the turmoil that Vanessa is dealing with at the moment.
“She can hardly keep it together,” an insider disclosed to PEOPLE. “She can’t finish a sentence without crying. But she is working very hard to pull it together for the other girls. She now has to be the strong one”. Kobe is survived by the couple’s three additional daughters, Natalia, 17, Bianka, 3, and 7-month-old Capri.
Despite the tragedy, Vanessa is said to be “surrounded by people who love her and Kobe. She has a good support system,” the second source explained.
The couple, who wed in April 2001, had a pact to never travel on the helicopter together, likely due to the potential of an accident occurring.
“He and Vanessa had a deal that they would never fly on a helicopter together,” the source told the magazine on Monday.
In a 2018 interview with Barstool Sports, Bryant explained the reason why he opted to use a helicopter as a form of transportation.
“I was sitting in traffic, and I wound up missing a school play because I was sitting in traffic, and this thing just kept mounting, and I had to figure out a way where I could still train and focus on the craft, but still not compromise family time,” Bryant explained on the show. “And so that’s when I looked into helicopters and being able to get down and back in 15 minutes. And that’s when it started.”
