Kobe Bryant, his teenage daughter, and seven other people died in the 2020 helicopter crash, and one of the first people on the scene was a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.
The deputy testified Friday that he “didn’t do anything wrong” when he took 25 photos at the scene, some of which included close-up images of body parts and sent them to others.
Los Angeles’ CBS reports
In federal court, deputy Doug Johnson said that he had to travel for more than an hour across inaccessible, overgrown terrain to reach the accident site.
To “record” the accident scene at the request of a deputy at the command post, he claimed to have searched the scene for survivors for approximately 15 minutes, pushed a few hikers out of the way, and taped off the area.
Vanessa Bryant, the widow of the NBA great, and Chris Chester, an Irvine financial consultant who lost his wife and 13-year-old daughter in the collision, are suing the county for an undetermined amount of money for negligence and invasion of privacy over pictures taken at the scene.
The county claims that all photos taken by the sheriff’s officers and firemen were instantly destroyed, are no longer extant in any form, and never made public.
The plaintiffs claim that they still experience mental anguish at the potential for images of their family members’ mutilated corpses to one day appear online because, as one of their lawyers this week reminded the jury, “digital lives forever.”
Johnson stated under questioning by a lawyer for Bryant that he texted the command post deputy the 25 images and AirDropped them to an unnamed county fire supervisor.
The next year in Las Vegas, he claimed to have misplaced the phone.
Attorneys representing Bryant and Chester claim that after Johnson forwarded the pictures, at least 10 other people saw them, some of whom allegedly showed them to the general public.
On the third day of the trial, Johnson said he never considered it improper to have death photographs on his personal mobile phone.
He said that sending and receiving pictures of dead corpses was “standard practise” among law enforcement officers.
The deputy testified before the jury in downtown Los Angeles that he had “thousands of times” taken pictures at crime and accident scenes using his phone.
After returning home that evening, according to Johnson, he erased all the pictures he had taken at the site of the helicopter accident as well as a text conversation with the deputy at the command post.
He said on the witness stand, “I know I didn’t do anything unlawful, that I don’t remember learning at the school that family members had rights to the death pictures of loved ones.
Johnson said under cross-examination that “photographs are the most accurate and comprehensive method to capture” accident scenes.
Before Johnson’s testimony, which included accounts of the victims’ severe injuries, Bryant fled the courtroom.
A Los Angeles woman who lost two family members in the crash testified earlier on Friday that she saw former Los Angeles County fire captain Tony Imbrenda show images of remains on his phone while they were both attending the Golden Mike Awards gala at the Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City in February 2020.
Luella Weireter testified inconsolably that she had lost her cousin and the relative’s spouse in the accident and was still in mourning when she went to the awards ceremony.
According to her testimony, the wife of Imbrenda urged her to see the images of Kobe’s body on the fire captain’s phone.
Additionally, she said that that evening, she overheard a different fire officer state that he had “just looked at Kobe’s burnt-up corpse and I’m ready to eat.”
Weireter travelled to a Malibu fire station a few days later to lodge a complaint.