Vanessa Bryant names 4 cops accused of sharing Kobe crash photos
Vanessa Bryant has named four Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies whom she says shared grisly photos from the helicopter crash that killed her husband, Kobe, and daughter Gianna.
Joey Cruz, Rafael Mejia, Michael Russell and Raul Versales are named as defendants in a lawsuit Bryant first filed last September. The county sheriff’s and fire departments are also defendants.
The four officers all shared pictures of the crash, including photos of Kobe Bryant’s body, despite not being part of the investigation, the lawsuit said.
Cruz flashed the photos at a bar to impress the bartender, according to the lawsuit, which said the interaction was captured on security camera footage.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department fought against the release of the officers’ names, but Bryant won a court decision last week that allowed for the public identification of the cops. Bryant named names Wednesday in several Instagram posts.
Mejia, Russell and Versales all distributed the photos to co-workers who were not involved in the crash investigation, Bryant’s lawsuit said. The National Transportation Safety Board, not the county sheriff’s office, ran the inquiry.
Bryant’s initial complaint from September said at least eight officers took and shared unnecessary photos from the crash site and kept them on personal phones.
“Sheriff’s Department personnel showed off the photos of the victims’ remains to colleagues in settings that had nothing to do with investigating the crash,” the suit said. “And the photos became the subject of gossip within the Department.”
The bartender who Cruz shared the photos with bragged about them to other patrons, according to the suit. It didn’t sit right with one man, who emailed the sheriff’s office and reported the interaction, the lawsuit said.
The suit also slammed Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva and his department’s internal investigation into the photo leaks. Bryant said she was promised a copy of that investigation, but had to obtain one through a court order instead.
The NTSB concluded in February that the Jan. 26, 2020, crash that killed Kobe, Gianna and seven others was the result of human error by experienced pilot Ara Zobayan. Zobayan was one of the nine people killed.
