Pictures of pain
Kobe’s wife suing over death s e photos
Vanessa Bryant has filed a gut-wrenching lawsuit over the graphic photos that eight Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies allegedly snapped at her late husband Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crash site.
In her 21-page complaint obtained by the Daily News, the widow of the NBA superstar says she is physically “ill” over the thought of strangers “gawking” at images showing the bodies of her beloved husband and 13-year-old daughter, Gianna.
The Lakers legend was traveling with Gianna, two other eighth-grade girls and their family members to a youth basketball tournament in Thousand Oaks, Calif., the morning of Jan. 26.
Their helicopter encountered dense fog along the way and crashed, killing the nine people onboard.
Bryant said she was “devastated and distraught” as she met with Sheriff Alex Villanueva at the sheriff ’s station in Lost Hills that day. She said the sheriff personally assured her that “deputies were securing the crash site” as fans and onlookers descended in droves.
“The biggest threat to the sanctity of the victims’ remains proved to be the Sheriff’s Department itself. Faced with a scene of unimaginable loss, no fewer than eight sheriff’s deputies at the crash site pulled out their personal cell phones and snapped photos of the dead children, parents and coaches,” her lawsuit states.
“The deputies took these photos for their own personal gratification,” the paperwork says.
“The gratuitous images soon became talked about within the department, as deputies displayed them to colleaguesg in settingsg 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,” the lawsuit says.
“A bartender overheard this interaction and filed a written complaint with the Sheriff ’s Department,” it states.
Bryant claims in her fling that Villanueva “directed a coverup” rather than inform the families or initiate an investigation.
The sheriff asked the deputies to delete the photos, but
“did not conduct a standard in nvestigation or collectcollect, in-inspect s or search the offending deputies’ cell phones to determine how many existed, whether and how they had been transmitted or whether they were stored on the cloud,” c the complaint says.
Bryant eventually learned about the photos from a story in n the Los Angeles Times.
“The Sheriff ’s Department’s outrageous actions have caused Mrs. Bryant severe emotional distress and compounded the trauma of lo osing Kobe and Gianna,” her l awsuit states.
“Mrs. Bryant feels ill at the thought of strangers gawking at images of her deceased husband and child, and she lives in fear that she or her children will one day confront horrific images of their loved ones online,” it says.
The 21-page lawsuit asks for real and punitive damages to be determined at trial.
It includes claims for invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and violation of Bryant’s 14th Amendment right to equal protection.
The Sheriff’s Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent Tuesday.