Brandy, the Angel in Disguise singer-turned-actress who received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on March 30, 2026, recently released her memoir, Phases. In the memoir, she has opened up about her 2006 car crash, which led to the death of a woman named Awatef Aboudihaj, who was 38 years old.
The 47-year-old Come a Little Closer singer, whose real name is Brandy Rayana Norwood, reflected on the time of the car crash in her book, which was released on March 31, 2026.
As cited by Us Weekly, Brandy, while mentioning that December 2006 morning in her book when the accident took place, 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.”
The Moesha star mentioned in her memoir that on the morning before the accident took place, she was “focused” and that her “mind was clear.” Norwood then mentioned that whatever memory she has of the accident “exists in fragments”. She wrote:
“Still, I couldn’t see the danger in time. I didn’t see the car ahead of me strike the vehicle in front, didn’t register the sudden chain reaction until my world was being split into two halves: before and after.”
Following the accident, Brandy blamed herself for it and thought the crash was her fault. While she heard from a bystander that that wasn’t the case, she also remembered Awatef Aboudihaj being taken out of her car. After Aboudihaj’s death, Brandy explained how she experienced “unimaginable grief”. The singer wrote:
“She was rushed to the hospital with sirens wailing into the distance. She passed away the next day.”
While mentioning how engulfed she was in guilt, Brandy wrote:
“Guilt gripped my throat, squeezed harder and harder until breathing became a conscious effort. It was an accident — a tragic convergence of circumstance and human error. But a woman had lost her life. And I had lived.”
Brandy hid from the world following the devastating 2006 car crash
In her recently released book Phases, Brandy mentioned how she couldn’t face the world and chose to hide from it after the accident. She wrote:
“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?”
The victim’s family eventually filed for a $50 million suit, which was settled out of court.
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Edited by Priscillah Mueni