- Vanessa Bryant shared the names of four deputies who allegedly took photos of the helicopter crash that killed her husband and daughter.
- Kobe Bryant's widow won a suit last week to obtain the names of the four deputies.
- She shared images of unredacted court documents on her Instagram Wednesday
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
One week after winning her case to obtain the names of deputies who are alleged to have taken gruesome photos of the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash site, Vanessa Bryant posted the officers' names on social media.
In a series of 12 Instagram photos Wednesday night, Bryant shared screenshots of unredacted court documents detailing the actions of four Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies who, according to the documents, took and shared photos of the helicopter crash scene that killed her husband, their 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven others in January 2020.
According to an amended complaint against the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department filed by Bryant's lawyers on Wednesday, LA Sheriff's Department, deputies who responded to the crime scene used their personal cell phones to take and share "gratuitous photos of the dead children, parents, and coaches." One deputy in particular reportedly took between 25 and 100 photos of the scene that were focused directly on the crash victims' remains.
The disturbing photos became "gossip within the Department," according to court records, and the four deputies named in the suit reportedly "showed off" the photos to various colleagues and non-colleagues, including to a bartender at a restaurant one of the deputies was visiting.
One deputy, who had no role in investigating the accident, later told investigators "curiosity got the best of [them], and such curiosity was "in [their] nature" as deputies, according to the records.
Within forty-eight hours of the crash, at least ten members of the LA Sheriff's Department possessed the photos, court records said.
Bryant sued the LA Sheriff's Department in September, accusing the four deputies of "negligence" and "intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of her right to privacy."
Following a months-long fight in court, a federal judge ruled in favor of Bryant last week, rejecting a bid by the department's attorneys to keep the names of the four deputies under wraps, arguing that "hackers may attempt to seek out and gain access to the individual deputies' devices to locate any photographs and publish them."
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department had no comment at the time of publication.
The complaint is below:
