Eyal Smener was on the phone in his living room when he heard a loud whirring sound. He thought it might be a helicopter flying much lower than usual up in the hills behind his home in Calabasas, but he did not hang up the phone to investigate. The noise he heard next is one he will not soon forget. “It was this weird, loud grinding sound,” he said. “And then nothing. Just nothing.” He didn’t think much about it until his wife told him an hour later there had been a terrible helicopter crash involving Kobe Bryant. Then he knew he had heard the final seconds of Bryant and the other souls lost aboard a helicopter that Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva told reporters had claimed the lives of nine people on Sunday morning.