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LOS ANGELES – Vanessa Bryant, the widow of late Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant, took the stand here Friday morning, describing the panic attacks and anxiety she’s suffered since learning about the photos taken and shared between authorities in the helicopter crash that killed her husband in 2020. , her daughter and seven other people.
“I want to remember my husband and my daughter as they were,” Bryant said, testifying through tears. “I never want to see these photos shared or viewed.”
Bryant’s testimony, in a federal court a couple of miles from the downtown arena where her late husband led the Lakers to five championships, marked the emotional climax of a harrowing legal saga that has has developed here since the accident in January 2020.
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Bryant and Chris Chester, whose wife and daughter were also among the victims of the crash, have used the civil rights lawsuit to demand answers from Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and firefighters about why they did what they did gruesome cellphone photos of the crash scene and then shared them, including at a bar and a fire gala.
Bryant said that in late February 2020, a month after the accident, she was in the playroom of her home with her two young children when a television news report showed that LA County authorities had took and shared illicit photos of the scene.
“I was hoping they would have more compassion and respect,” said Bryant, whose testimony was expected to continue Friday morning. “My husband and my daughter deserve dignity.”
The afternoon before Bryant took the stand, Chester said he felt those answers were still elusive, noting the shifting justifications given by early takers. Like Vanessa Bryant, Chester said he was haunted by the possibility that illicit crime scene photos could still emerge.
County prosecutors have argued that deputies and firefighters had official reasons for taking photos at the scene. But the court testimony of these first responders has sometimes become humiliating. A fire captain claimed he no longer remembered being at the scene and left the witness stand to pick himself up three times. Another deputy apologized for showing a friend of the bartender photos of the scene. Forensic analysis has shown that mobile phones and hard drives containing the illicit photos were mysteriously missing or wiped clean.
Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said it’s the kind of embarrassing and damaging testimony that usually prevents a settlement. But in this case, with Vanessa Bryant worth hundreds of millions of dollars, there hasn’t been one.
“If this case wasn’t about Kobe Bryant and if the plaintiff didn’t have the resources to take it to trial, I doubt it would ever have gotten this far,” Levenson said. “For the Bryant family, they want accountability and they have the resources to get it.”