Chris Chester who lost daughter, wife in Kobe Bryant plane crash is 'fearful all the time' of photos leaking
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: A helicopter crash in the Santa Monica Mountains near Calabasas, California, Los Angeles on January 26, 2020, took seven lives, besides basketball legend Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna. These included Sarah Chester and 13-year-old Payton, the wife and daughter of Christopher Chester. The grieving widower testified on Thursday, August 18, in the Vanessa Bryant lawsuit.
He told the jury that he is "fearful all the time every day" that the gruesome photos from the plane crash site will get leaked to the public. Chester is a co-plaintiff in a federal civil lawsuit filed by Kobe Bryant’s widow, Vanessa Bryant. The lawsuit alleges Los Angeles County and some of its agencies and employees invaded their privacy and failed to fully contain the spread of the photos, inflicting emotional distress.
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Chester who was the father of three children, the now-deceased Payton and her surviving 18-year-old twin brothers, publicly talked about the plane crash for the time in an emotional testimonial on Thursday, August 18. Remembering his daughter, the father said, Payton "was quite an accomplished basketball player" on her team with the Bryants' daughter Gianna. Further, he said, on the weekend of the plane crash, he and his wife decided that she (Sarah) would take Payton to her basketball game while Chester would go to the twins' lacrosse tournament. On the morning of the flight, he said a brief goodbye to his daughter and wife, unaware that he was seeing them for the last time.
"Payton and I had a very close relationship. I gave her my rah-rah speech," he says, and then kissed Sarah and told them, "I'd see them tonight. Chester said he got worried about them when his last message went unanswered. In a panic, he connected Kobe Bryant’s assistant who revealed she lost communication with them. Without thinking twice, he left his sons’ tournament and rushed to the Lost Hills sheriff's station, where he got to know about the news of the helicopter crash.
"Lots of things were going through my head, but I thought I was going to a hospital," he explained, thinking that Payton and Sarah would be injured, but still alive. But the station was alarmingly quiet, he said, and "I had started to get an eerie feeling." He was taken to an area with the other families, including Vanessa, where they were eventually told that there were no survivors. "It was heavy," he said. "My life will never be the same." Chester said he was assured that the photos taken by the coroner and National Transportation Safety Board are going to be kept private as when he asked coroner about the remains of his family member, she said, "It's not something you or anyone wants to see."
But he was left stumped when he first learned that members of the sheriff's department had taken and publicly shared photos from the crash scene, he was at first in disbelief. "It didn't seem plausible," he said. Chris testified that he has suffered high anxiety at the thought of those photos ever leaking to the public. "I didn't even think they'd have photos," he said. "It never crossed my mind in my wildest imagination that sheriffs with cell phones would take photos and then share them."
Chris who said he struggled with depression and ended up drinking heavily revealed he decided to join Vanessa’s lawsuit as he wanted to get to the bottom of what happened. "I wanted justice and accountability." Chris said that when he buried Sarah and Payton, "I told Sarah to take care of Payton and I've got the boys and I'll see you again." He added "I'm thankful every day that I gave Sarah a kiss that morning and said 'I love you.' " He continued: "The grief of losing a child…you're not supposed to outlive your kids."
While Chester made his testimony on Thursday, Vanessa Bryant is set to testify Friday morning. The trial has so far witnessed the testimonies by several law enforcement officials, including a deputy who testified of showing graphic images from the plane crash to his bartender friend at a bar, another deputy who said he shared photos while playing a video game, a deputy who sent dozens of photos to someone he didn't even know.