Back on January 26th, 2020, Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna tragically passed away in a helicopter crash on a hillside in Calabasas, California.
As with any crash, there was an immediate investigation and many photos taken, but as reported months ago, some deputies took photos and proceeded to show them off to people they knew. One such deputy tried to impress a girl at a bar by showing them off and it ultimately led to a person nearby hearing what he was doing and filing a complaint.
Now, Vanessa Bryant is filing a legal complaint with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over this massive invasion of privacy.
Via PEOPLE:
“The claim, exclusively obtained by PEOPLE, seeks damages for emotional distress and mental anguish following the revelation that eight L.A. County Sheriff’s Department deputies took graphic photographs of the victims and shared them with unauthorized people. This happened despite Vanessa personally speaking to Sheriff Alex Villanueva on the morning of the crash to request the site be secured for privacy.
“In reality, however, no fewer than eight sheriff’s deputies were at the scene snapping cell-phone photos of the dead children, parents, and coaches,” the document asserts. “As the Department would later admit, there was no investigative purpose for deputies to take pictures at the crash site. Rather, the deputies took photos for their own personal purposes.”
Back in March, there was said to be at least two L.A. firefighters who took photos and were told to delete them.
Friday’s filing says the “department’s mishandling of this egregious misconduct” only worsened Vanessa’s “emotional distress.”
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It continues:
“This [filing] solely is about enforcing accountability, protecting the victims and making sure no one ever has to deal with this conduct in the future,” a spokesperson for the Bryant family exclusively tells PEOPLE in a statement.
“When a family suffers the loss of loved ones, they have the right to expect that they will be treated with dignity and respect,” the family spokesperson adds. “The Deputies in this case betrayed that sacred trust. This claim is intended to hold the Sheriff’s Department accountable and to prevent future misconduct.”
“Rather than formally investigate the allegations to identify the extent of dissemination and contain the spread of the photos, Department leadership reportedly told deputies that they would face no discipline if they just deleted the photos,” the claim says.
“Mrs. Bryant was distressed to learn that the Department did not initiate a formal investigation until after the L.A. Times broke the story on or about February 28, and that the Department had taken few if any steps to contain the spread of the photos,” the filing continues.
The threat of the photos becoming public one day “compounded” Vanessa’s grief, the claim says.
“Mrs. Bryant has suffered an immense tragedy by losing her husband and daughter; her grief has been compounded by the severe emotional distress caused by the sheriff’s deputies’ misconduct and the Sheriff’s Department’s mishandling of that misconduct,” it says.
The claim also states that Vanessa knows of people who have seen the photos online.
“Mrs. Bryant is deeply worried that all copies of the sheriff’s deputies’ photos have not been accounted for, and that it is only a matter of time before she or her daughters encounter them on the Internet,” the claims says.
“Upon information or belief, sheriff’s deputies shared photos of victims’ remains with individuals unaffiliated with the investigation for their own excitement and sense of self- importance, including one instance where a deputy shared photos to impress a woman at a bar,” the filing continues.
“The sheriff’s deputies who took and shared the photos are thus liable for negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of Mrs. Bryant’s right to privacy in the death images of her loved ones,” Vanessa’s legal team says.
Kobe, Gianna, as well as Payton Chester, Sarah Chester, Alyssa Altobelli, Keri Altobelli, John Altobelli, Christina Mauser, and the helicopter’s pilot Ara Zobayan all perished in the crash.
