Aaliyah Was Killed By Her Pilot.

🎶Aaliyah Dana Haughton🎶

"I want people to remember me as a full on entertainer and a good person."

She was a recording artist, actress and model who was ahead of her time. Aaliyah's nicknames were Li-Li and Baby Girl. She was playful, compassionate and caring. She was a prankster. Aaliyah loved to sleep, play word games, shop at Fred Segal in Los Angeles, and eat breakfast food, even late in the afternoon. She also loved reading Harry Potter books.

Aaliyah was born in Brooklyn on January 16th, 1979 to Diane and Michael "Miguel" Haughton. She was raised in Detroit. Aaliyah was destined for stardom. She started voice lessons shortly after she learned to talk. At age 11, Aaliyah opened for her aunt, Gladys Knight in Las Vegas. She signed a contract with Jive Records at the age of 12. She studied dance at the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts and earned a 4.0 GPA. At fourteen, Aaliyah released an album produced by R. Kelly, called, "Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number", which sold more than 1 million copies. 

Rumors swirled that she had married Kelly when she was only fifteen and he was twenty-seven. Aaliyah denied it, even though a marriage certificate was found in a Chicago county clerk’s office. 

Aaliyah's second album, "One in a Million", dropped in 1996, and sold 2 million copies. It also launched its producer-songwriter team, Timbaland and Missy Elliott, to stardom. 

By the time Aaliyah was 18, she was on top of the world with a successful string of critically acclaimed, best-selling albums and singles. 

Aaliyah began modeling for Tommy Hilfiger and taking acting lessons, which led to a starring role in the 2000 film, "Romeo Must Die", as well as the role of Akasha in Queen of the Damned, which was released after her death. She had also been cast in both of the sequels to The Matrix, which she had started shooting in L.A. before her death.

Her third record, Aaliyah, released in July 2001, was already gold when she flew to Abaco Island in the Bahamas to finish the video for the album’s third single, “Rock the Boat,”.

The self-proclaimed "street but sweet" Aaliyah was poised to become a global icon. Her life was tragically cut short, when she died in a plane crash on August 25, 2001, on her way back to Florida. 

On board the ten-seat twin-engine Cessna 402B with Aaliyah was the pilot, Luis Morales III, and seven members of her crew: video-production director Douglas Kratz, bodyguard Scott Gallin, hairstylists Anthony Dodd, and Eric Forman, Blackground Records executive Gina Smith, makeup artist Christopher Maldonado, and friend Keeth Wallace. Less than a minute after it took off, the plane crashed just a few hundred feet from the runway. Aaliyah was among six passengers dead at the scene with three others passing away hours later.

The cause of the crash was due to the aircraft being over it's maximum weight by 700 pounds during take off. Also there was one more passenger than it was certified to carry. The pilot was to blame was well. He had falsified the number of flight hours he had in order to get his license. He also lied about how much time he had flown from his last employer. When they did his toxicology report, traces of cocaine and alcohol in his system.

Aaliyah was laid to rest on August 31st, 2001. Her funeral was closed to the public, but hundreds of her fans lined Park Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side as the singer’s casket was carried to St. Ignatius Loyola Roman Catholic Church. At her funeral 22 white doves were released to symbolize each year of her life.

Later, a public memorial at Cipriani 42nd Street was attended by more than 3,000 mourners.