Kobe Bryant.Photo: Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images
Four Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies who allegedly shared unauthorized and graphic photographs of the January 2020 helicopter crash that killed NBA legendKobe Bryant, his daughter,Gianna, and seven others, can now be publicly named.
In his decision, Walter said he believed the public should be given such information in matters of alleged police misconduct.
“Indeed where the case involves allegations of police misconduct, the public has a vested interest in assessing the truthfulness of the allegations of official misconduct, and whether agencies that are responsible for investigating and adjudicating complaints of misconduct have acted properly and wisely,” he wrote, according to theTimes.
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The county has four days to appeal the judge’s decision, theTimesreported.
Vanessa thanked the judge and her attorney, Luis Li, in anInstagrampost on Monday night announcing the news.
“As the Department would later admit, there was no investigative purpose for deputies to take pictures at the crash site,” the document continued. “Rather, the deputies took photos for their own personal purposes.”
Only the county coroner’s office and investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were permitted to photograph the scene, Villanueva confirmed to reporters at the time.
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“That is the only two groups of people,” Villanueva said last March. “Anybody outside of that would be unauthorized. They’d be illicit photos.”
At least two firefightersallegedly took photographs as well and were told to delete them.
In September, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill thatwill prohibit first responders from taking photographsof deceased victims “outside of job duties,” according toAssemblyman Mike Gipsonof Carson, who pushed for the legislation.
Vanessa, who was featured in the PEOPLE cover story for theWomen Changing the World issue, recently said that her source of strength since the tragedy has been her daughters Natalia, 18, Bianka, 4, and 20-month-old Capri.
“This pain is unimaginable [but] you just have to get up and push forward,” she told PEOPLE. “Lying in bed crying isn’t going to change the fact that my family will never be the same again. But getting out of bed and pushing forward is going to make the day better for my girls and for me. So that’s what I do.”
source: people.com
