Los Angeles County is seeking to force Kobe Bryant’s widow and others to undergo psychiatric evaluations to determine whether they actually suffered emotional distress, after rescuers took and shared graphic photos of the site of the 2020 helicopter crash in the one that the basketball player and his teenage daughter, along with seven other people, lost their lives, according to documents delivered to the court.
Vanessa Bryant, whose federal lawsuit against the county alleges an invasion of privacy, has stated in court documents that she has experienced “severe emotional distress” that has compounded the trauma of losing her husband and 13-year-old daughter. Gianna.
Kobe Bryant and the others perished on January 26, 2020, when the helicopter they were traveling in, en route to a youth women’s basketball tournament, crashed into the hills west of Los Angeles amid fog. Federal safety authorities blamed pilot error for the crash.
The lawsuit filed by Vanessa Bryant alleges that rescuers, including firefighters and police department agents, shared photographs of her husband’s body with a bartender and that they were passing “unnecessary photographs of the dead minors, parents and coaches.” The Los Angeles Times was the first to report that an internal police department investigation found that officers had shared photographs of the victims’ remains.
None of the first responders were directly involved in the accident investigation or had any legitimate purpose for taking or disseminating the grisly photos, the lawsuit notes. Last year, California Governor Gavin Newsom approved a measure, which emerged after the accident, which makes it a crime for first responders to take unauthorized photos of deceased people at the scene of an accident or crime.
“Mrs. Bryant feels bad thinking that strangers are stunned by the images of her dead husband and daughter, and lives in fear that she or her children will one day see those terrible images of their loved ones on the Internet”, they point to some documents delivered to the court. AP (HN)