UPDATE: Vanessa Bryant Sues The L.A. County Sheriff Over Leaked Photos Of Helicopter Crash Site
Back in May, Vanessa Bryant filed a claim against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for allegedly sharing unauthorized photos of the scene of the Jan. 26 helicopter crash that killed her husband, Kobe Bryant their daughter Gianna, and seven others. In her claim, she alleged that Sheriff Alex Villanueva personally assured her that deputies were securing the crash site to ensure her privacy, the Los Angeles Times reported.
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“In reality, however, no fewer than eight sheriff’s deputies were at the scene snapping cell-phone photos of the dead children, parents, and coaches,” the claim states, according to the Times. “As the department would later admit, there was no investigative purpose for deputies to take pictures at the crash site. Rather, the deputies took photos for their own personal purposes.”
According to an update by TMZ, Vanessa has officially filed to sue the L.A. County Sheriff and his department, claiming they caused her severe emotional distress when deputies took those graphic photos and shared them with colleagues that had NO investigative purpose — which eventually made its way online. The lawsuit also notes how the photos were exposed; when a deputy was at a bar and showed the photos to a woman he was trying to impress. The bartender heard the conversation, and called the sheriff’s department.
According to the gossip site, Vanessa also says in the suit that’s when Sheriff Villanueva tried to cover it all up by going to the Sheriff’s substation that responded to the crash and telling deputies if they deleted the photos they would not face discipline. The suit claims the purpose of his talk was destruction of evidence, TMZ notes. In addition to that, the lawsuit claims Villanueva did not tell the families about the photos and sadly learned of it in the media when the story broke that deputies took the photos.
She is seeking unspecified damages, including punitive damages.
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