Vanessa Bryant sues police for disrespecting Kobe and Gianna at crash site

By: Dalila Hashish, News Editor, The Pawprint

Vanessa Bryant is suing the LA police department for negligence and violation of privacy, after it surfaced that at least eight officers took and shared anywhere between 25 and 100 photos of the crash where nine people lost their lives. Those photos included close ups of Kobe and Gianna’s remains. 

Officers Joey Cruz, Rafael Mejia, Michael Russell, and Raul Versales have all been called out for being responsible for the photos, with Cruz being accused of sharing the photos of Bryant with a bartender, and the others are accused of sharing “gratuitous photos of the dead children, parents, and coaches.” The photos had “no conceivable investigatory purpose and were focused directly on the victims’ remains”, and they were taken for no professional purposes. 

Bryant revealed the names of the officers on 12 captionless Instagram posts, posted on Wednesday the 17th of March. Accumutavely, the posts racked up over one million likes since they were posted. 

For privacy reasons, Vanessa is keeping the full details of the case private and out of social media, at least for the time being.