Vanessa Bryant breaks down in tears on first day of trial over pictures of Kobe crash scene shared by cops
Vanessa Bryant broke down in tears discreetly in the courtroom on Wednesday, August 10, as her attorney described to the jury the gruesomeness of a photograph that a sheriff's deputy allegedly showed to a group of random bar patrons two days after the dreadful accident. Vanessa's NBA star husband Kobe Bryant, their daughter Gianna, and seven other people perished in a catastrophic helicopter crash in January 2020, leaving the mother in a vulnerable predicament.
The attorney, Luis Li, claimed that a witness who was present at the Baja California Bar & Grill in Norwalk on that occasion was so offended by Deputy Joey Cruz's actions that he officially complained to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, alleging that the deputy was "showing pictures of [Kobe's] decapitated body."
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Li played a video to the jury during his profound opening statement which showcases Deputy Cruz lounging at the bar and waving his cell phone towards a bartender to show him something. The bartender looks genuinely shaken by what he sees and turns to leave.
"January 26, 2020, was and always will be the worst day of Vanessa Bryant's life," Li stated to the 10-person jury that was earlier chosen on Wednesday, August 10, to hear the anticipated 10-day trial for the grieving widow's privacy invasion lawsuit against Los Angeles County. "County employees exploited the accident. They took and shared pictures of Kobe and Gianna as souvenirs. They poured salt in an unhealable wound."
Fire authorities, among other first responders, "walked around the wreckage and took pictures of broken bodies from the helicopter crash. They took close-ups of limbs, of burnt flesh. It shocks the conscience," according to Li. He even released an audio of a detective confessing that his own wife refused to see the pictures after he called them "piles of meat," according to the detective.
Eight months after the horrifying incident on January 26, 2020, Vanessa Bryant filed a complaint, claiming that the thought of people "gawking" at graphic photographs of her husband and daughter, 13, caused her significant emotional pain and made her physically "ill." She claims that first responders took the images "for their own personal gratification."
"The gratuitous images soon became talked about within the department, as deputies displayed them to colleagues in settings that had nothing to do with investigating the accident. One deputy even used his photos of the victims to try to impress a woman at a bar, bragging about how he had been at the crash site," her papers assert.
Vanessa further alleges that during an awards ceremony at a Hilton hotel in February 2020, a Los Angeles County fire official shared crash site pictures with off-duty firefighters and their wives and girlfriends after receiving them from coworkers.
Legal experts for the county contend that the case is without basis because no images have ever been made public. "It is undisputed that the complained-of photos have never been in the media, on the Internet, or otherwise publicly disseminated. Plaintiff Vanessa Bryant has never seen county photos of her family members," according to the county's attorneys.
Deputy Cruz was a rookie when the fatal collision occurred, and county attorney Mira Hashmall stated in her opposing opening statement that he regrets his conduct. She was certain that the county's public dissemination of unlawful pictures did not constitute a violation of the Bryant family's constitutional rights.
"The county continues to express its deepest sympathies for the families that suffered this terrible loss. The county has also worked tirelessly for two and half years to make sure its site photos of the crash were never publicly disseminated. The evidence shows they never were. And that is fact, not speculation," Hashmall, a partner at the law office of Miller Barondess, stated in a statement provided to Rolling Stone.
"This case is about accountability. We're going to prove to you that county employees took pictures and shared them widely," Li spoke to the jury on August 10, Wednesday. He asserted that because the photographs were distributed to so many people in so many different ways, it is hard to rule out the possibility of a leak in the future.
Li stated, "Every single day since the county did what it did, Mrs Bryant and Mr Chester have the risk, have the fear, have the anxiety, have the terror that they might have to re-live the loss of their family members in the most excruciating way."