Kobe Bryant’s widow awarded nearly $29m after police shared crash site photos
Kobe Bryant’s family has reached a settlement for almost $29m (£24m) after police shared graphic images of the basketball star’s fatal helicopter crash.
Bryant and his daughter Gianna died along with seven others when their helicopter crashed near Los Angeles in 2020.
Sheriff’s deputies and firefighters took and shared grisly photos of the remains of Bryant and 13-year-old Gianna.
Bryant’s widow Vanessa will now receive $28.5m from Los Angeles County, which includes the $16m she was awarded by a jury after a trial over the leaked photos last year.
At the trial, Ms Bryant testified that news of the photos compounded her grief after losing her husband and daughter.
She said she wanted to begin to grieve the loss of her husband and daughter, but was faced with “fresh horror” after learning of the leaked photos a month after the crash.
“I felt like I wanted to run, run down the block and scream,” she said. “It was like the feeling of wanting to run down a pier and jump into the water.
“The problem is I can’t escape. I can’t escape my body.”
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The court was told that a sheriff’s deputy shared the photos of Bryant’s body with a bartender as he drank, and that firefighters circulated them among each other at a banquet.
In March 2021, Ms Bryant shared the names of four sheriff’s deputies she said had distributed “gratuitous photos of the dead children, parents, and coaches”.
She claimed the pictures were taken and shared “for no reason other than morbid gossip”.
California has since passed a state law prohibiting first responders from taking unauthorised pictures of people who die at the scene of an accident or crime.
