Kobe Bryant crash photos were shared by deputies as ‘gossip’, court hears

An institutional “culture of callousness” led Los Angeles county deputies and firefighters to shoot and share photos of the remains of Kobe Bryant and other victims of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed the Lakers star, his 13-year-old daughter and seven others, a lawyer for Bryant’s widow told a jury on Wednesday.

Vanessa Bryant’s attorney Luis Li told jurors in his opening statement in her invasion of privacy trial against the county that the cellphone photos shot at the crash scene by a deputy and a fire captain were “visual gossip” viewed “for a laugh” and had no official purpose.

“They were shared by deputies playing video games,” Li said. “They were shared repeatedly with people who had absolutely no reason to receive them.”

An attorney for the county defended the taking of the photos as an essential tool for first responders seeking to share information when they thought they might still save lives at the chaotic, dangerous and hard-to-reach crash scene in the Calabasas hills west of Los Angeles.

“Site photography is essential,” Los Angeles county lawyer J Mira Hashmall said.

Vanessa Bryant cried frequently during her lawyer’s presentation. She was still wiping tears from her eyes minutes afterward during a break.

Li told jurors that learning a month after the crash about the photos’ circulation not from the county but the Los Angeles Times compounded her still-raw suffering.

“26 January 2020 was the worst day of Vanessa Bryant’s life. The county made it much worse,” Li said. “They poured salt in an open wound and rubbed it in.”

Li played jurors security video of an off-duty sheriff’s deputy drinking at a bar showing the photos to the bartender, who shakes his head in dismay. The lawyer then showed an image of