Aaliyah Reportedly Drugged Before Boarding Fatal Plane Crash

Late pop-star Aaliyah was reportedly drugged before boarding the flight that crashed 20 years ago this month. 

Kingsley Russell, who’s family ran a taxi firm in the Bahamas, was with the star the day that she died. He was working as a baggage carrier at 13-years-old and his step-mother drove Aaliyah and her team to the airport.

In a new book, Baby Girl: Better Known as Aaliyah, written by music journalist Kathy Iandoli, Russell has reported some new information.

He claims the singer refused to board the plane and went back to sleep in the car driven by his stepmother, telling her team she had a headache.

She was allegedly carried onto the plane while sleeping.

He added that Aaliyah repeated her concerns about getting on the plane/the size of the plane but was eventually handed a sleeping pill.

“They took her out of the van; she didn’t even know she was getting boarded on a plane,” Russell states in the book.

“She went on the airplane asleep.”

The flight claimed her life, along with eight other members of her entourage, when the plane crashed shortly after take-off about 200 feet from the end of the runway.

It has been said that the plane struggled to gain altitude as the plane was over its allotted weight by several hundred pounds.

Iandoli has stated that these new claims have given her, and others, the closure that they needed

“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… 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,” she continues, “The fact that she was so adamant, staying in the cab, refusing — these are things we never knew.”

“She should still be here, and I think that’s the saddest part about it. She deserved better.”

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