Vanessa Bryant Wants Justice After Deputy Allegedly Showed Photos Of Kobe Bryant’s At Bar
Two days after Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash, a deputy trainee at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department allegedly showed photos of the accident scene at a local bar.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Sheriff Alex Villanueva, after learning about what had happened, offered deputies amnesty from discipline if they came clean and deleted the images.
Deputy trainee Joey Cruz had photos of the carnage on his phone that were forwarded to him by another deputy that he showed to the bartender at Baja California Bar and Grill, according to surveillance video recorded by the establishment.
46-year-old Ralph Mendez, who sat in a booth near the bar and was informed Cruz had photos of the crash site on his phone, pondered about what to do when he was driving home from the bar. He didn’t initially believe the patron had the pictures on his phone, but would regret not trying to stop them from being shared with other people, or worse, leak online.
When Mendez, a father himself, got home he contacted the sheriff’s office, writing, “There was a deputy at Baja California Bar and Grill in Norwalk who was at the Kobe Bryant crash site showing pictures of his ... body. He was working the day the helicopter went down … He is a young deputy, shaved head with tattoos on his arm,” according to the Times.
While the photos have never surfaced on the Internet within the almost two years since the crash, the possibility that they may surface underpins the lawsuit by Vanessa Bryant, which is now being fought in federal court.
“For the rest of my life, one of two things will happen: either close-up photos of my husband’s and daughter’s bodies will go viral online, or I will continue to live in fear of that happening,” Vanessa Bryant said in a declaration in the case.
Bryant, along with other families who lost loved ones in the crash, have sued the county and the sheriff for negligence and invasion of privacy. The Board of Supervisors has already agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle two of the suits, however Bryant and one other family have refused to settle.
Access to Bryant’s psychological records has already been granted to lawyers for the county, who hope to prove her anguish is unrelated to the photos. The attorneys have called her suit a vengeance-fueled “cash grab” of taxpayer dollars by a plaintiff who is already a millionaire many times over.
Bryant is suing L.A. County for invasion of privacy and accuses county sheriff’s and fire department employees of improperly sharing pictures of human remains from the crash site. She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages to punish deputy defendants.
The scandal surrounding the photos has already inspired a change in the law, making it a misdemeanor for first responders to take unauthorized photos of a death scene. In her deposition, Bryant says she still wants “accountability,” though the details of what that means aren’t specified.
Bryant’s lawyers argue that since the images spread to dozens of sheriff’s deputies and firefighters, it’s impossible to tell how far they’ve spread.
The court will consider the case in the light of a 2012 precedent ruling from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that involves the death of a 2-year-old boy. The case saw a former prosecutor give images of the boy’s corpse to journalists, which prompted a lawsuit by the mother who argued she was horrified at the possibility of finding her son’s deceased images on the Internet.
