- Read Sales
- BBC Mundo correspondent in Los Angeles
8 hours
image source, Getty Images
Vanessa Bryant demands compensation for the “emotional anguish” caused by the circulation of the photos.
“January 26, 2020 was the worst day of Vanessa Bryant’s life. The county made it much worse. They poured salt on an open wound and rubbed.”
That was what Bryant’s attorney, Luis Li, said as soon as he took the stand last Wednesday in the California Central District Court.
It was the first day of the trial for the lawsuit filed by his client, the widow of Kobe Bryant, against Los Angeles County for the Photographs taken at the scene of the helicopter crash that killed the NBA superstar, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven other people on January 26.
image source, Archyde.com
The helicopter crash in February 2020 killed Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna (pictured), along with seven others.
Vanessa Bryant alleges that employees of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office and the Los Angeles Fire Department captured the images with their cell phones in the mountains of Calabasas, in the west of the city, and shared them at times and places irrelevant to the investigation, including a bar and an awards ceremony.
With the federal lawsuit, filed in September 2020, seeks compensation for alleged damages, violation of civil rights, negligence, violation of privacy and “emotional distress” that all this caused him.
And he has as a co-plaintiff Christofer Chester, whose wife, Sarah, and daughter Payton also died in the accident.
The trial is expected to last until next week.
Photos as part of the “gossip”
The photos circulated as part of the “gossip”, “to laugh”, the lawyer stressed in his opening statement, while Bryant’s widow listened to him without stopping crying.
The rescue services “walked through the rubble and took photos of the bodies… They shock the conscience,” Li said, adding that they were then “repeatedly shared with people who had absolutely no reason to receive them.” .
He said it while showing the jury a security video showing an off-duty sheriff’s deputy drinking at a bar, showing his cell phone photos to the bartenderwho shook his head in dismay, and a later image of both men laughing, according to the media that were present in the room.
He also described how some firefighters shared the photos in February 2020, during the Southern California Radio and Television News Association’s Golden Mike Awards cocktail party, and about 30 people came to see them.
And he accused the county of failing to conduct a thorough investigation to ensure that they had control over all copies and that they would not be leaked and that the day would not come when Bryant and his other children would find the copies online. “tragic images that would haunt them all their lives”.
“Essential” part of the job
For her part, the attorney representing the county, Jennifer Mira Hashmall, said during her opening statements that taking pictures of a crash like this is “essential.”
It was essential for the rescuers, who were in a place of difficult access and they thought they could still save livescould share information about the “chaotic and dangerous scene,” he argued on Wednesday.
And he stressed that the fact that the images have not circulated in these two years shows that those who head the Sheriff’s and Fire departments did their job.
“They are not online. They are not in the media. Not even the plaintiffs themselves have seen them“, he said, quoted by the media.
image source, Archyde.com/Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sports
The accident caused an international uproar.
Already in March 2020, the Los Angeles County Sheriff, Alex Villanueva, assured that all the photos of the scene of the accident had been deleted and that they had been taken “administrative measures” against the eight department employees who captured and shared.
And the defense attorney explained now that Villanueva opted for it so as not to undertake “a long investigation that could further affect the family.”
“He felt that every extra minute that passed mattered,” he concluded.
Practice “grim and extended”
Among the variety of witnesses who have testified these days in the trial there have been those who have fallen into contradictions.
This is the case of Sheriff’s Deputy Rafael Mejia, who maintained that he did not know if the photos showed the bodies of the victims, when in a statement in 2020 he described in detail burned body parts.
“It’s just that time has passed,” he told the jury when asked for explanations for the change of version. “It’s not that I’m trying to lie. It’s a memory lapse.”
image source, Getty Images
A bronze sculpture by artist Dan Medina depicting Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna was placed at the crash site in Calabasas, California, on January 26.
Along the same lines, retired fire captain Brian Jordan swore under oath that he did not remember the scene of the incident, when in a previous statement he had recounted how he walked through the rubble.
For his part, Adam Bercovici, a retired Los Angeles Police Department lieutenant who testified as an expert, said that the behavior of the employees who took and circulated photos of Bryant’s accident is one more example of a “Ghoulish and Widespread” Practice in Accidents Involving Celebritiesaccording to the newspaper Los Angeles Times.
image source, Getty Images
Basketball shoes autographed by Kobe Bryant at an exhibition in Los Angeles, California on July 28, 2022.
In fact, in the wake of the case, in September 2020 California Governor Gavin Newson signed a law amending the Penal Code to prohibit first responders and firefighters from sharing photos of victims of an accident or crime scene “to any purpose other than official law enforcement purposes.”
It is known as “the ley Kobe Bryant” and its violation, a misdemeanor, can carry a fine of up to $1,000.
The passengers in the crashed helicopter were on their way from Orange County to the Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks for a youth basketball game in which Bryant was to coach and his daughter Gianna and two other girls were to play.
In the accident that shocked many, in addition to those mentioned, Alyssa (14), Keri (46) and John Altobelli (56), Christina Mauser (38) and the pilot Ara Zobayan (50) died.
After a year of investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that on that foggy day the pilot of the N72EX helicopter did not follow the flight rules established for these meteorological conditions, he became disoriented and descended crashing against the hillside.
Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and two Olympic gold medals with the US team, was an 18-time All-Star, among other achievements, and in 2020 he was posthumously inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
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