Vanessa Bryant says she feels ‘sick’ and ‘extreme sadness and anger’ knowing that Kobe and Gianna crash scene photos were shared by LA County officials| News Today

• In a moving statement, Vanessa Bryant said she lived in constant fear of seeing crash photos resurface.

• “This conduct has caused me tremendous pain and distress,” Bryant said in the statement.

• Bryant said Google sometimes automatically suggests “Kobe Bryant crash images” and “Kobe Bryant’s body”.

In a new statement submitted by Vanessa Bryant in her case against LA County, Bryant said she felt “sick” and “extremely sad and angry” when she learned that officers had taken and shared complaints. photos from the site of her husband and daughter’s helicopter crash.

“This conduct has caused me tremendous pain and distress,” said Bryant in the statement, which accompanied a motion filed in opposition to the county’s request to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that the photos had been permanently deleted. .

“It infuriates me that the people I trust to protect the dignity of my husband and daughter have abused their position to obtain mementos of their deaths, as if having photos of their remains makes them somehow. kind specials, “said Bryant:” I imagine Kobe is watching over them what happened at the scene of the accident, and I am overcome with anger and emotion. “

“I also feel extreme sadness and anger knowing that the photos of my husband and daughter’s bodies made people laugh at a screening at a bar and at an awards banquet,” Bryant wrote. .

In September of last year, Vanessa Bryant sued Los Angeles County, its firefighters, the sheriff’s department and eight sheriff’s officers over reports that first responders took and shared photos of the site of the horrific crash where Kobe and his daughter Gianna “Gigi” Bryant and seven others died in January 2020.

Bryant sued the county for negligence, the intentional imposition of emotional distress and invasion of his right to privacy.

In November, LA County attorneys argued that photos of the former NBA superstar’s helicopter crash had been deleted by employees and could not be recovered. The defendants have asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit based on the findings of an independent medical examiner who examined more than 20 LASD and LACFD devices and allegedly found no photos of the crash site.

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In her statement, Bryant said she did not agree with the county’s reasoning for dismissing the lawsuit.

“In this lawsuit, the county seems to be claiming that a deputy sending photos of my husband and daughter’s bodies to a video game buddy who works for the sheriff’s department is somehow less bad than sharing photos with a member of the public. ” Bryant said. “For me the pain is the same.”

“They [digital photos] can be stored, backed up and shared in countless ways, sometimes even inadvertently, ”Bryant wrote, referring to cloud storage systems like iCloud or tracks via direct messages on social media.

“When you type” Kobe “into search functions to search for something related to my husband online, the search functions sometimes automatically suggest” Kobe Bryant crash photos “and” Kobe Bryant body “,” a- she added.

In the file, Bryant claimed she saw a photo purporting to show Kobe Bryant’s remains and was “tormented by the idea of ​​who had taken it and whether it represented my husband.”

“Someday, like when my daughters are tasked with researching their family tree for a school project, I don’t want them looking up my husband and daughter’s names to find photos of their remains,” Bryant added. “For the rest of my life, one of two things will happen: Either close-up photos of the bodies of my husband and daughter will go viral online, or I will continue to live in fear of it happening. . “

Insider has reached out to attorneys representing LA County and Vanessa Bryant for further comment.

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