Vanessa Bryant publishes lawsuit against police officers who posted images of Kobe crash

 The death of basketball idol Kobe Bryant, 41, at the end of January 2020 left the world in shock and his family - who also lost one of their daughters, Gianna - mired in grief. But far from immobility, his widow, Vanessa, quickly took action on the matter of his death and warned that she was going to act. 

First, to resolve the blame for how the helicopter accident in which her husband and her daughter lost their lives had taken place; later, to find out who had leaked some of the images from the crash site and Bryant's death. The morbidity of the catastrophe was such that the police had to monitor the area to prevent photographers and scavengers from loitering around the place.

Now, Vanessa Bryant has taken legal action on the matter and has filed a complaint against the Los Angeles sheriff's deputies that she believes released the images of the accident site where her husband and her daughter died. 

If barely a month after the accident she was already angry at the dissemination of the photographs, since she had asked the police to protect her privacy and they did not do so, last September she definitively sued the Los Angeles sheriff, Alex Villanueva, and He claimed damages for negligence, because he was caused "intentional emotional pain" and for the invasion of his right to privacy. 

Now, on her Instagram profile, she has posted 12 photographs of the lawsuit that she has filed, pointing out in striking red the names and surnames of the four men she accuses.

In her lawsuit, her Bryant points to four individuals, but also various institutions: Los Angeles County, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and the City Fire Department. 

The four men had already been denounced in September, but a judge this March has allowed their names to be made public, hence the publications of Vanessa Bryant. Something that county attorneys have complained about, arguing that the fact that the identity of these four people is made public can cause confrontations and attacks, especially online.

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In the lawsuit that he has posted on his profile - where he has more than 14 million followers - it is explained how Vanessa Bryant's lawyers spoke with Sheriff Villanueva the same morning of the incident to clearly request that the area be protected in order to of family privacy. 

Now, the legal documents affirm that the security that the police had to provide was “an empty guarantee”, because “the sheriff's agents who went to the scene of the accident used their mobile phones to take unnecessary photographs of parents, children and coaches. deceased ”.

Attorneys for the Bryant family explain that according to the investigation conducted in the sheriff's department, one of the four defendants “took between 25 and 100 photos of the accident scene on his mobile phone, many of which were not intended to serve to the investigation and were focused directly on the victims. 

In addition, those images spread "quickly in the department, because the officers passed them to each other by text message and by AirDrop", a functionality of Apple devices that allows immediate file sharing via Bluetooth without loss of quality . "In 48 hours, at least 10 members of the department had photos of the victims, which remained on their mobile phones despite not having the right to legitimate use of them," the lawsuit reads.

The accusations in the lawsuit are against some of those four members in particular and, for example, one of them is accused of taking and sharing photos of Kobe and Gianna and sending them to colleagues who did not have a role in the investigation "For no other reason than morbid gossip." 

The lawyers also complain that the images were not only shared between members of the department, but were shown, for example, to colleagues from other counties, but also to their mothers, nephews or their fellow video game players, people at all involved in the case. Specifically, they give as an example a waiter in the Californian city of Norwalk who was shown some images two days after the accident, something that that man later recounted and described in detail to other people in the establishment. Someone who overheard that conversation was the one who alerted the authorities.

Eight months have passed since the helicopter crash that killed basketball superstar Kobe Bryant, 41, as well as his daughter Gianna, 13, and the seven other people on board. When the event took place in Calabasas, Los Angeles (California), a multitude of images and videos were made public that showed the jumble of iron that the device had become.

Now Vanessa Bryant, the widow of the deceased athlete, has made the decision to file a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department because some of its agents shared “unauthorized” photographs, she argues, of the helicopter and the scene of the event. . She therefore asks for damages for negligence, because she was caused "emotional pain on an intentional basis" and for the invasion of her right to privacy.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Vanessa Bryant alleges that that Sunday, January 26, shortly after the accident, Sheriff Alex Villanueva told her personally that his agents were securing the area where the flight had crashed in order to protect his Privacy. But the lawsuit of the player's widow comes after an investigation by that same newspaper has discovered that those agents took photographs of the scene of the event and shared them.

“Mrs. Bryant”, can be read in the lawsuit, leaked by the newspaper, “feels sick just thinking about all those strangers gaping at the images of her deceased daughter and husband, and lives in fear that she or her daughters give one day, on the Internet, with those horrible images of their loved ones ”.

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According to the lawsuit "no less than eight sheriff deputies took out their mobile phones at the scene of the incident and took pictures of the dead children, their parents and the trainers." Furthermore, it is alleged that "the officers took these photos for their own personal gratification." 

The sheriff himself has admitted it and claims that he asked his men to destroy those images, but he knows that at least one left the apartment, because one of the men showed it to a woman in a bar. Then a waitress heard him and decided to notify the police.

What Bryant is looking for, according to his lawyer, Luis Li, goes beyond financial compensation: he has to do with "accountability." "And with preventing that shameful behavior from happening to other families who suffer losses in the future." In addition, another issue that has hurt the widow and mother of three other daughters of the basketball player is knowing that "the department [of the sheriff] did not open a formal investigation until the newspaper report was published," according to Li. 

However, Sheriff Villanueva assures that he took “the actions that were correct in exceptional circumstances, and in fact affirms that he himself has proposed to create a law that makes the taking of images at crime scenes a crime.

As the L.A. Times continues to reveal, when the sheriff learned of the newspaper's investigation, he ordered his agents to destroy the photos quickly. In fact, he assured that the matter had been handled correctly at the time and that there was no open investigation because there were no indications of crime.

But another lawyer for Vanessa Bryant named Gary C. Robb revealed that she had personally come to Villanueva's office after the accident to ask him to designate that dangerous area as no-fly, but also to save those images. According to this lawyer, the sheriff then assured that they would take "all measures to protect the privacy of the family", but they requested an internal investigation with the most rigorous levels of discipline for those responsible. 

For the Bryant family attorney, Villanueva's behavior has been "inexcusable and deplorable." "This is a violation of human decency, respect and the right to privacy of the victims and their families"

Michelle Obama commented on alleged racism in the royal family. comments on the interview of Henry England a and Meghan Markle: Family is the most important thing

The former first lady of the United States maintains a close and cordial relationship with the Dukes of Sussex and has expressed her wish that her problems with the Windsors be solved

The marriage of Barack and Michelle Obama has in recent years become a kind of mouthpiece for American popular sentiment. His words, be they about health, foreign policy or welfare, are listened to with attention by half the world. Hence, the statements that the former first lady of the United States has made about the now famous interview that Henry of England and Meghan Markle granted to Oprah Winfrey just over a week ago are especially striking. In it they revealed their differences with the British royal family, accused some of its members of racism and exposed their mental health problems, which even amounted to suicidal thoughts.

A little over a week after her talk with Winfrey, Michelle Obama was asked for her opinion on the matter during an interview with Access Hollywood. Although it was initially focused on his new series for Netflix, Gofre + Mochi, which hits the screens this March 16 and seeks to promote health, exercise and good nutrition among children, Obama did not miss the topic of the moment and He wished the Sussexes that they managed to turn the page of everything that is happening to them.

"That is my hope. When I think of everything that is happening, I think of the importance of the family, and I pray that there is forgiveness, that there is clarity of thought, love and that they manage to resolve it in time ", said the first lady. "Because there is nothing more important than family."

The relationship between the Obama couple and Prince Henry of England dates back years, before Markle came into her life. In October 2015 the three together promoted the Invictus Games, a kind of Olympic Games created by Enrique for war veterans. The prince and Michelle Obama went to a basketball game together with players in wheelchairs.

In April 2016, videos were sent where they challenged each other, in order to give visibility to the Invictus, which were then held in Orlando “Hey, Prince Enrique.

Do you remember when you told us that we had to give everything in your Invictus Games? ”, Asked Michelle Obama then, mocking and threatening at the same time. “Be careful what you wish for!” Barack Obama finished off. A year and a half later, in November 2017, the youngest son of Charles of England was invited by the marriage to Chicago to talk about how the youngest could become active citizens in society. A month later, Enrique was interviewing Barack Obama in Toronto, Canada, for the Today program of the British channel BBC Radio 4.

With the arrival of Markle to the group, the relationship seemed to take hold even more. In a post on her Instagram profile, Michelle Obama addressed the former Suits series actress as "my friend" and called her "a wise leader." In the Vogue issue that Markle directed in the summer of 2019, in which she portrayed a large number of powerful or important women in society, Michelle Obama was not lacking. In fact, it was one of the highlights of the number, as Markle interviewed her in what one statement called "a genuine conversation."

In addition, last July Michelle Obama and Meghan Markle met together in a talk, The Girl Up's global leadership summit, as speakers. There they spoke - along with Jameela Jamil or Priyanka Chopra, Markle's good friend - about gender equality and feminism.

With their march to the US, the Dukes of Sussex have partly followed in the footsteps of the Obamas, signing juicy contracts with content platforms such as Netflix or Spotify. What at the moment seems unlikely is that, like them, they will write a memoir. That's what they have Oprah Winfrey and her interviews for.