Baby Girl

by Kathy Iandoli

  The Abaco Islands are small and tight-knit, but tourism is definitely a real stream of income. A young man named Kingsley Russell was part of his family’s business, where his mother worked at the airport and his father and stepmother had a taxi and hospitality business. His auntie also drove taxis and worked in hospitality. Kingsley was only thirteen at the time, but when a celebrity landed in Abaco and used his family’s business he would be the luggage carrier, because that meant he would get the best tips. Kingsley’s auntie Annie Russell was the person who picked up Aaliyah at the airport when she first arrived. While waiting in the taxi line, Annie conversed with a member of Instinct Productions and the two got along. She was then brought on to secure drivers and equipment handlers for the duration of the trip, while also assisting in scouting spots for rehearsals and filming. Annie spoke with South Florida’s Sun Sentinel a week after Aaliyah’s passing about the experience. “She had money, but it didn’t spoil her,” Annie remarked. “She acted as if she knew you for a long time. She was a nice person.”

  Kingsley’s stepmother, Louise McIntosh, was one of Aaliyah’s taxi drivers throughout her Bahamian trip. She even cooked conch stew for Aaliyah on request. When Aaliyah first arrived at the resort, Kingsley was there to grab the luggage. He was there again in the taxi ride to the airport for the flight back to Miami. “When we were on the long road stretch to the airport, I was talking to her,” Kingsley says. She was kind; his little sister Diamond sat in the back with her, and Aaliyah called her Little Sis. His cousin was there in the van too, and everyone was asking Aaliyah questions. “She was talking about her life and her career,” Kingsley adds. “I asked any question I could fit in, in between my cousin and my sister.” Kingsley then asked her how he could be famous like her one day. “Please don’t be a singer… or a rapper,” she advised. “Write a book. Become an author instead.” He took that advice and later started writing his own sci-fi novel because of her. “She was so nice and so happy,” Kingsley expresses. “She was smiling the whole time… until we got to the airport.”

  When Aaliyah reached the Marsh Harbour Airport and saw the tiny plane waiting for her, she didn’t want to board it. It was significantly smaller than the one she had arrived in. The check-in for travel at the airport is outdoors, covered by a series of huts. She returned to the taxi van, flustered, just as Kingsley was arranging her luggage outside of the van. “I know she was speaking to her entourage and they were going back and forth with the pilot,” he says. “I guess they had this argument with the pilot, but she didn’t want to get on the plane.” Lining the airport are taxi drivers, waiting for passengers to drive into the island. “We heard the taxi officers—everyone that was inside the hut where they were all chillin’ and waiting for the planes to land—they were all talking about the luggage and all of the heavy stuff.” Everyone was in the airport whispering to one another. “They were like, ‘How are they gonna put this girl on this little plane with all of this heavy stuff when the plane is overweight?’ Everyone was telling them that the plane was overweight and [Aaliyah] was on board with that. [The airport staff] and Aaliyah had the common sense that the plane was overweight. She was getting frustrated because she was getting nowhere in the argument.” Kingsley also overheard from other baggage handlers that Aaliyah was even told the luggage was lessened so the plane was now safe, when that wasn’t true. Aaliyah was still concerned. She complained of a headache and went back to the taxi van. She got on the phone with her boyfriend, per Kingsley, who he later learned was Damon Dash.

  While speaking with Aaliyah, Dash echoed his previous sentiment from before: don’t go. A private G4 jet was slated to come get her and her team the following day (Sunday, August 26), but as the summer was coming to a close Aaliyah had several packed weeks leading into the fall ahead of her, including presenting at the MTV VMAs a few days after Labor Day weekend. This would be one of her last weekends to spend with Dash. It was confusing for her, and she was emotional. As she sat in the taxi van, spiraling, she put her head down. She said she wanted to take a quick nap; then she dozed off.

  “So we came out of the car and my stepmom, I remember, put the air conditioner on full blast,” Kingsley continues. “Someone from her entourage opened the door and woke her up; I think they were talking to her and asking her what was wrong.” Aaliyah advised them that she had a headache, reiterating again that she didn’t want to get on the plane.

  Then Aaliyah was handed a pill.

  “We went to go to the food stand to get her a cup of water and we brought it back. That’s when she took the pill and fell back off to sleep.” This time, however, it appeared that she fell immediately into a deep sleep and not just dozing. It was almost suspicious, but young Kingsley wanted the scoop on what was going on inside of the airport. “Me and my cousin went back in the airport because we wanted to finish hearing the stuff that was going on,” he continues. People were bickering, demanding that the plane get off the ground to “get her back on time to where she needed to go” and saying how people “were going to get fired for slowing down the process.” Aaliyah and her team had arrived at the airport around 4:00 PM, and there was a lengthy wait for takeoff. They were supposed to be heading for Miami at 4:30, so everyone was growing agitated at the multiple delays, despite the glaring safety violations. “There are varying reports of arguments between Aaliyah, her entourage, and the pilot overheard by baggage handlers at the airport,” the Abaco Islands local paper The Abaconian reported on September 1, 2001.

  They all attempted to board the plane after nearly two hours of waiting, when the pilot allegedly again advised that there was too much cargo and too many passengers. By this point, emotions were high, and the team (outside of Aaliyah) grew adamant to board, even when the baggage handlers also pointed out that there was far too much cargo for the plane to fly safely.

  Then the argument abruptly ended. The pilot ultimately agreed to continue forward with the flight. “They just started loading all of the stuff onto the plane,” Kingsley says.

  Meanwhile, Aaliyah was still knocked out, unaware of what was going on. “They took her out of the van; she didn’t even know she was getting boarded on a plane,” Kingsley reveals. “She went on the airplane asleep.” Whether she had any moment of consciousness, where she acquiesced to her team’s desires despite her own concerns, remains a mystery.

  The aircraft that attempted to fly Aaliyah home (a Cessna 402-B twin-engine plane) can carry anywhere from six to ten passengers, factoring in cargo and the weight distribution of the people on board. The aircraft is only able to take off at a weight of 6,300 pounds. An empty Cessna 402-B itself weighs 4,117 pounds alone, with the fuel weighing in at 804 pounds. Considering a significant number of the team flew on board (Aaliyah, seven of her team members, and one pilot) with their luggage and equipment in tow, they were pushing the limits of the bodies allowed on board, even without factoring in their luggage and heavy equipment. The Abaconian also reported that there was “no indication that any of the luggage was weighed before it was loaded on the plane.” The baggage that managed to be salvaged weighed 574 pounds—that’s not including one piece of luggage that was lost in the marsh. The remaining weight allowed was around 805 pounds. Aaliyah’s bodyguard, Scott Gallin, was 300 pounds himself. That left a little over 500 pounds remaining among seven individuals. Meaning, around 70 pounds per person was the maximum weight. Survival was impossible, given those numbers. Investigators have surmised that the plane was carrying a weight that was 700 pounds beyond its authorized capability.

  It was arguably the perfect evening for flying, with nothing but clear skies, as the plane was scheduled to head from the Marsh Harbour Airport to Miami’s Executive Airport in Opa-Locka. The engines prior to takeoff were inspected and appeared to be working fine. Everything was a go. The plane traveled down the runway and hit the air at 6:45 PM, though not for long. Within a minute’s time, the airplane reached a height of 200 feet off the ground. Spectators have said that the plane made it
to the air and quickly took a left turn for the worse, nose-diving and crashing beneath bushes, facing 180 degrees from its direction at takeoff. Gasoline was spilled everywhere, igniting a fire all around the remnants of the airplane. One of the engines, the right one, appeared to be in flames while the plane was still in the air. Kingsley and his cousin didn’t see the crash, but they heard it, as they were sitting and eating in the airport. He saw people running with fire extinguishers to head to the site, and that’s when he learned of the crash. He was told to never speak of the incident.

  The plane was left in torn-up parts, some pieces still ablaze, others completely disintegrated. Charred seats were ejected from the plane, and bodies were flung everywhere, while some were still stuck inside. The pilot was found dead in his cockpit. Aaliyah’s bodyguard, Scott Gallin, was found alive, saying he was thirsty and asking about Aaliyah’s well-being. He was her bodyguard since high school. He was also saying that he wanted to see his son. Gallin died around ten minutes into his flight to a Nassau hospital. One of the other passengers, hair stylist Anthony Dodd, was still alive yet badly burned and was successfully transported to a hospital in the Bahamas, Nassau’s Princess Margaret Hospital, but he passed away after 3:00 on Sunday morning. Another unidentified passenger was found alive and severely burned, screaming in agony. That person barely survived being transported before passing away shortly thereafter.

  And almost twenty feet away from the wreck lay Aaliyah. She was still in her seat, with her seat belt on, coiled up on her left side. She looked as though she were hugging herself, her head affixed between her legs. Her hair was burned off from the flames, and she was covered in burns, with signs of massive head trauma. Aaliyah had a weak heart, so while the autopsy report confirmed that condition, there was also speculation that she suffered a heart attack during the short flight. Her body was so severely burned and in such a state of shock that her survival would have been “unthinkable.”

  An icon was gone, at just twenty-two years old, due to the crash of a plane that should have never taken flight.

  The mortician at Marsh Harbour who was called to collect the bodies and wrap them in fire blankets and body bags advised that it was terrible to witness. “I’ve been on some gruesome ones,” mortician Ernest Scott told investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker in 2009, “but this one was bad.” Bahamian investigators on-site initially chalked the crash up to engine failure, despite the dual engines passing inspection prior to takeoff. It was also deduced that the overloading of cargo and people on the flight could have contributed to that engine failure.

  There were so many moving parts to the crash, and it took years for the pieces to come together. Even now, still, there are inconclusive fragments to the story. Yet the end result is still the same. Aaliyah didn’t make it home, and neither did the eight other people on the flight with her.

  Those on the flight included her bodyguard, Scott Gallin, age forty-one. Then there was Douglas Kratz, who was the director of video production at Virgin Records. He was only twenty-eight. Gina Smith, who was Aaliyah’s product manager at Blackground Entertainment, was only twenty-nine. Keith Wallace was forty-nine and a manager for Blackground. Two of Aaliyah’s hair stylists—Anthony Dodd, thirty-four, and Eric Foreman, twenty-nine—died along with makeup stylist Christopher Maldonado, thirty-two. The pilot, Luis Morales III, was thirty.

  And Aaliyah Dana Haughton, age twenty-two.

  There’s something especially dismal about musicians dying in plane crashes. From Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens to Patsy Cline, Otis Redding, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, artists who die during this travel are typically headed to do something to continue their art or returning from it. It’s not to say that drugs and gun violence and disease aren’t devastating ways for a musician (or anyone for that matter) to die. It’s just that these individuals died in the name of doing something they loved: music. Aaliyah was no exception, but knowing how desperately she didn’t want to board that plane makes her untimely death even more hurtful for those she left behind.

  News of Aaliyah’s plane crash broke in the wee hours of the morning on August 26, 2001. Headlines were to the point and heavy: “Aaliyah, Singer and Actress, Killed in Plane Crash” (New York Times), “Pop Star Aaliyah Dead in Plane Crash” (ABC News), “Aaliyah Killed in Plane Crash” (MTV). The news cycle had a way of making it more real with its pointed verbiage. It stabbed.

  When the news broke, rapper Ludacris was on stage in Anaheim, California, for Power 106’s Powerhouse back to school concert, which included him, Ja Rule, Nelly, OutKast, and many others. As his performance was about to finish, a person jumped to the stage and whispered in Luda’s ear. He paused. “Hold up. This is serious,” he said. “We just found out R and B singer Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash.” The crowd (and Ludacris) stood there in shock but held a moment of silence for her. All of the artists backstage were shaken up when they heard the news. Ja Rule was up next to perform, and he got on the stage numb and in disbelief. He had just been with her right before she passed, but they didn’t get to really connect. “The last time I saw Aaliyah, it was too quick,” he now recalls. “We were both doing 106 & Park and I was rushing to the stage. Someone from my camp was like, ‘Yo, Ja! Baby Girl is here. You wanna holla at her real quick?’ and I was like, ‘Yo, I’ll see her when I get offstage when I get back.’ I didn’t get to see her after that. She had to rush to the stage. They were moving us around really quickly. So I didn’t get to really see her. It was just a quick hi; we didn’t even get to kick it. And that was the last time I had seen her. It was like, damn, I took for granted that I would see her again.”

  While most reported on her passing from a place of honor and sympathy, one radio DJ did not. HOT 97 morning show shock jock Star (of Star & Buc Wild) announced Aaliyah’s death by playing plane crash noises and people screaming in the background. Morning show co-host Miss Jones stormed out of the studio after he did that. What followed was an onslaught of angry responses, from both HOT 97 listeners and artists. Rapper Q-Tip called in to say that the station was losing his support; it was rumored that Jay-Z also threatened to lead a major boycott. Fans of Aaliyah took to the internet, posting Star’s personal information, as well as a major petition to have him removed from the station called “No More Star.” Veteran journalist Davey D also watched the fans work firsthand. “The Star incident has reached such heights that I saw the petition being passed around at a candlelight vigil for Aaliyah right here in Oakland, 3000 miles away,” he wrote on his site DaveyD.com. Star was ultimately suspended from the station, and while he had played countless tributes to Aaliyah earlier on in the show, one swift act of recklessness negated all of it. The moment spread from coast to coast; the next day he apologized to the fans, along with Damon Dash. It was a heartless joke to chase, but the way Aaliyah’s fans mobilized was comparable to a modern-day assembly of any fan hives for artists like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, or Nicki Minaj. Still, despite Star’s tasteless move, many other celebrities and artists all spoke of Aaliyah—each with an anecdote of how she touched their lives.

  Mariah Carey wrote about how she felt about Aaliyah’s passing while in the midst of enduring her own well-documented emotional setbacks in her 2020 memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey: “When we got to LA my anxiety and disorientation was intensified by the tragedy of Aaliyah’s sudden and horrific death. Just a few days earlier she had told the press, ‘I know this business can be difficult, it can be stressful. Much love to Mariah Carey. I hope she gets better soon.’ The entire music industry was rocked by her death, but the R & B and hip-hop community was devastated. She was indeed our little princess.”

  There was an outpouring of grief that followed from the music and film industries alike. That Monday (August 27), MTV VJ John Norris held a news brief on Total Request Live, where Timbaland called in on the air. He was beside himself and could barely talk. “She’s like blood, and I lost blood,” he said, fighting through tears. “Me and her together had this chemistry. I feel l
ike I’ve lost half of my creativity side.” DMX released a statement for MTV to air, where he described her as “a down-to-earth sister with enough energy to put anyone on a cloud.” Jive Records even released a formal statement on behalf of R. Kelly; MTV simply (and appropriately) regarded him on air as the producer of her first album: “R. Kelly is deeply saddened by the tragic loss of Aaliyah. His thoughts and prayers are with her family during this time of grief.” Puffy was hosting TRL that day and was still grieving to the audience. “She’s just one of those individuals that would light up a room,” Puffy told the audience and Norris. “She’s one of those individuals that was very down-to-earth. She doesn’t really feel like ‘Aaliyah,’ like a big superstar. She always felt like just a beautiful person, like a special individual that whenever you was around her, she treated everybody the same—whether it was a fan or a person on the street, or me.” His words followed with a montage of Aaliyah’s best MTV moments, complete with Carson Daly naming her pet snake on air Boots. “Biggie’s death hurt my soul, but Aaliyah’s? That took my soul for a long time,” remembers Lil’ Kim.