Singer Brandy has confessed she battled “unimaginable grief” after she was involved in a horrific four-car pile up that left one woman dead admitting she felt as she didn’t have “the right to continue living my life”.
Brandy felt “unimaginable grief” after she was involved in a horrific four-car pile up that left one woman dead.
The 47-year-old singer was driving along a freeway in California in December 2006 when her car rear-ended another vehicle and caused multiple collisions which led to the death of Awatef Aboudihaj, 38, and Brandy has now reflected on the traumatic event in her new memoir Phases.
In her book, she wrote: “It was just a drive, another day traveling the pale concrete veins of the 405. How many times had I coasted along this mundane stretch of freeway?”
“But all familiarity was shattered on a chilly December morning in 2006. There had been no warning. No shiver down the spine. No flicker in the atmosphere hinting at what was to come.”
Brandy insisted she was focused during the drive but she still wasn’t able to foresee the danger in time.
The singer went on to reveal her memory of the crash “exists in fragments” but she remembers hearing a scream and silence before seeing Aboudihaj being pulled out of one of the other cars.
Brandy then felt “unimaginable grief” after finding out the woman had died, adding: “It was an accident – a tragic convergence of circumstance and human error. But a woman had lost her life. And I had lived …
“I no longer felt I had the right to continue living my life, or even to experience fleeting glimmers of joy. The woman who had died would never again feel sunshine on her face or hold her children close.
“Who was I to smile? To sing? To exist in a world where she no longer could?”
Aboudihaj’s family later filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Brandy over her involvement in the crash and the case was settled out of court. The singer never faced criminal charges over the accident.
After the civil case was concluded, the music star’s attorney Blair Berk said in a statement: “We are extremely pleased that after a more thorough and extensive investigation by authorities … Brandy Norwood should not be charged with any crime whatsoever relating to the accident back in 2006.
“These past 12 months have posed an extraordinary hardship for Brandy and her family, who have been unfairly forced to live under a cloud of suspicion initially caused by the ill-advised and premature press release sent out by the California Highway Patrol accusing Brandy of wrongdoing before the police investigation was even finished.
“Brandy continues to be mindful that she was so fortunate to be uninjured in this accident and there was a life lost that should be remembered.”
In her book, Brandy reflected on the case’s conclusion but insisted she continued to carry feelings of guilt despite being cleared by authorities.
She wrote: “An investigation eventually concluded that this tragic alignment of circumstances wasn’t the result of my negligence.
“Claims were settled. No charges were filed against me. But by then, the guilt had already calcified in my soul, hardening into something permanent and unmovable.”
Brandy felt ‘unimaginable grief’ after fatal car crash
