Russell was a teenager who handled some of the luggage for Aaliyah, while his mother’s transportation business shuffled the singer to the airport.
“They took her out of the van; she didn’t even know she was getting boarded on a plane,” Russell said in the book Baby Girl. “She went on the airplane asleep.”
Iandolis said this provided the closure she 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,” she said. “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 the common sense to not get on the plane. The fact that she was so adamant, staying in the cab, refusing—these are things we never knew.”
