LOS ANGELES —
Los Angeles County is in search of to compel psychiatric evaluations for Kobe Bryant’s widow and others to find out if they really suffered emotional misery after first responders took and shared graphic images from the positioning of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed the basketball star, his teenage daughter and 7 others, court docket paperwork say.
Vanessa Bryant, whose federal lawsuit in opposition to the county alleges invasion of privateness, has claimed in court docket papers that she has skilled “extreme emotional misery” that has compounded the trauma of shedding her husband and 13-year-old daughter, Gianna.
Kobe Bryant and the others had been killed Jan. 26, 2020, when the helicopter they had been aboard, on their method to a ladies basketball match, crashed within the hills west of Los Angeles amid foggy climate. Federal security officers blamed pilot error for the wreck.
Vanessa Bryant’s lawsuit contends first responders, together with firefighters and sheriff’s deputies, shared images of Kobe Bryant’s physique with a bartender and handed round “gratuitous images of the lifeless kids, mother and father and coaches.” The Los Angeles Instances first reported {that a} sheriff’s division inner investigation discovered deputies shared images of victims’ stays.
Not one of the first responders had been immediately concerned within the investigation of the crash or had any official function in taking or passing across the grisly images, the swimsuit contends. Gov. Gavin Newsom final yr accepted laws prompted by the helicopter crash that makes it against the law for first responders to take unauthorized images of deceased individuals on the scene of an accident or crime.
“Ms. Bryant feels unwell on the considered strangers gawking at pictures of her deceased husband and baby, and she or he lives in concern that she or her kids will someday confront horrific pictures of their family members on-line,” court docket paperwork say.
Attorneys for Los Angeles County need the court docket to order Bryant and different members of the family of the individuals who had been killed within the crash, together with kids, to bear psychiatric evaluations as unbiased medical examinations. The legal professionals suggest that the evaluations be audio- and video-recorded and final eight hours for adults and 4 to 6 hours for kids.
The county contends that whereas the households “have undoubtedly suffered extreme misery and trauma from the crash and ensuing lack of their family members, their misery was not attributable to (the primary responders) or any accident web site images that had been by no means publicly disseminated.”
LA County attorneys wrote in court docket papers that such psychiatric examinations are “obligatory to judge the character and extent” of the households’ alleged accidents.
Vanessa Bryant’s attorneys, in filings submitted Friday, stated the county is resorting to “scorched-earth discovery techniques” designed to bully her and the members of the family of different victims into “abandoning their pursuit of accountability.”
Attorneys for Bryant and Los Angeles didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark Monday.
