If he was a devote Catholic, why did God take him in a helicopter crash, along with his daughter. That's a horrible way to die, and now his wife and kids have to suffer. Was God punishing him?
God works in mysterious ways. 
You are assuming that the Creator is benevolent. What if the Creator is a Voyeur?
From your post it sounds like you are an atheist correct? You are being sarcastic when you say "God works in mysterious ways". What you really mean to say is:"See this is why God does not exist and is a fairy tale!".
In a dog fight, the humans organizing it is the Creator. They build a cage. They decide which dogs will fight. They place them in the cage. They Created the dog fight. Without the humans the dogs might have never met and fought. Why they make the dogs suffer in the fight is irrelevant to the winner / loser goal of the fight.
In Kobe's case, if he was a devote Catholic, him dying in a crash does not mean that God was punishing him. Kobe and his daughter were going to die at some point in their lives. In this case they died sooner than expected.
I see the Creation as organic and not following a planned script. The beauty is that there are all these possibilities and choices that can make the difference between living and dying. Should Kobe have taken a limo instead of flying in a helicopter? Should he have bought a helicopter? Maybe he hired the wrong maintenance crew or pilot? Perhaps there was a defect on the aircraft?
Based on how complex the Universe is it is clear that there are trillions of possibilities and the Creator designed it that way. I don't think it is odd that Kobe could die in a plane crash and a Creator can exist.
