A new book shockingly claims that the late 'Try Again' singer did not want to board the aircraft and was given a pill that knocked her out before her tragic death in August 2001.
- Aug 2, 2021
AceShowbiz - Almost two decades after Aaliyah's death, more details of her final moment have been revealed. According to a new book, the 22-year-old could have avoided the fatal plane crash had it not been because of her team.
In the book titled "Baby Girl: Better Known as Aaliyah", author Kathy Iandoli claims to have spoken to a man named Kingsley Russell from the Abaco Islands who allegedly witnessed the singer being taken on onboard the flight while she was asleep. The man said the Brooklyn-born artist was hesitant to aboard the flight and was given a pill that knocked her out.
Kingsley's account of Aaliyah's final moment came to Kathy's attention after he posted a video in the wake of Kobe Bryant's helicopter crash. In the since-deleted YouTube video, he described how the helicopter crash was triggering because it reminded him of the day Aaliyah passed away.
"I remember when Aaliyah passed away, I was really upset," Kathy writes in the book, which excerpt has been obtained by Daily Beast. "The story kept saying that she was adamant about getting on the plane. I was almost upset with her. Why did you want to get on that plane so badly? I remember wrestling with this, being like, 'Well, she wanted to get back to Damon Dash, she wanted to be with her team, and who wouldn't want their stuff with them?' "
Kathy, who always thought that the story of Aaliyah being so insistent on getting on the small plane when it was clearly overloaded with baggage didn't add up to her fear of flying, especially when there was a chartered plane set to pick her up the next day, adds, "In learning that she did not want to get on the plane, for someone like myself and so many other people, I think that's closure for us."
"It's an unfortunate closure…," she notes, "but I needed to hear she didn't want to get on that plane; I needed to know that. The person who I thought had the most common sense in the world had common sense to not get on the plane. The fact that she was so adamant, staying in the cab, refusing-these are things we never knew."
Aaliyah died on August 25, 2001 after the plane that took her from the beachy shores of the Abaco Islands to Miami crashed. After the accident, it was confirmed that the small twin-engine plane exceeded its maximum weight limit by several hundred pounds. Additionally, a toxicology report found that the inexperienced pilot had cocaine and alcohol in his system.
