Vanessa Bryant sobs as she testifies about Kobe crash photos leak
Vanessa Bryant broke down on the stand Friday as she recalled the harrowing moment she first learned that graphic images of her late-NBA legend husband’s gory helicopter crash scene were being passed around by first responders.
The 40-year-old sobbed heavily and gasped for air in the Los Angeles courtroom as she testified how she had to run outside her home so her surviving daughters wouldn’t see her cry after reading a local media report about the leaked photos.
“I felt like I wanted to run down the block and scream. I can’t escape my body. I can’t escape what I feel,” Bryant, who said she was breastfeeding her youngest at the time, told the court.
“I just remember not wanting to react because the girls were in the room.”
Bryant added that she suffers anxiety and panic attacks over the fear that the gory images of her husband and 13-year-old daughter Gianna’s mangled remains could one day surface online.
“I live in fear I live in fear every day of seeing on social media and having these images pop up,” she testified, adding that she hasn’t seen them.
“I don’t ever want to see these photographs,” Bryant said. “I want to remember them as they were.”
“I don’t want my children to ever come across them,” she continued.
The NBA legend’s widow took to the stand as part of her federal invasion of privacy lawsuit regarding photos of the tragic helicopter crash that killed Kobe, Gianna and seven others in Calabasas in Jan. 2020.
She is seeking unspecified millions in damages from Los Angeles County after first responders allegedly passed around gory images of the wreck and mangled remains.
On the day of the fatal crash, Bryant testified that she had asked Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva to secure the wreckage site immediately after she learned there were no survivors.
She said the sheriff never mentioned to her that photos had been taken of the wreck as part of the investigation.
Bryant said she was disgusted to learn, weeks later, that sheriff’s deputies and firefighters had been showing off the crash site photos.
“I expected them to have more compassion, respect,” Bryant said of the first responders sharing the photos. “My husband and daughter deserved dignity.”
The 40-year-old wept as she spoke of how her husband’s remains were recovered in the initial search of the crash site, but her daughter’s weren’t located until the second day.
Clutching a tissue, Bryant testified that anyone who photographed her daughter’s body was “taking advantage of the fact that her daddy couldn’t protect her because he was at the morgue.”
Elsewhere in her testimony, Bryant spoke of having to put on a brave face for her three surviving daughters and how her husband always spoke of “putting one foot in front of the other.”
“I have two choices: I try to live my life or end it,” Bryant said.
Under cross examination, the grieving widow vowed to “go through hell and back to get justice for my husband and daughter.”
Bryant has repeatedly broken down during the trial so far as multiple witnesses testified about being shown the graphic images in the wake of the crash.
The mom had to leave the courtroom in tears last week after bartender Victor Gutierrez testified a sheriff’s deputies had once shown him snapshots of severed body parts while sitting at the bar.
Another sheriff’s deputy, Mike Russell, admitted under oath on Tuesday that he sent the images to a colleague while they were playing “Call of Duty.”
Meanwhile, firefighter Tony Imbrenda denied Wednesday that he showed the gruesome images to guests at a gala less than a month after the fatal crash.
