Widow of Kobe Bryant compensated $16m for leaked crash photos

• Vanessa Bryant, 40, claims she had panic attacks after seeing photos of helicopter crash.
• Co-plaintiff Christopher Chester will receive $15 million (£13.6 million).
• Vanessa Bryant’s husband Kobe Bryant and daughter Gianna died in the crash.

After gruesome images of the helicopter accident that claimed the lives of the American basketball star Kobe Bryant and his daughter in 2020 were leaked, Kobe Bryant’s widow was granted $16 million (£13.6 million) in damages.

After realizing that photos taken by firefighters and sheriff’s deputies in Los Angeles County had been published, Vanessa Bryant, 40, claimed she experienced panic attacks.

The county must now compensate Mrs. Bryant for her emotional hardship, a federal jury has ruled.

Co-plaintiff Christopher Chester will receive $15 million.

When their helicopter crashed in California in January 2020, Mrs. Bryant’s husband Kobe Bryant, 41, daughter Gianna, 13, and six family friends perished. The accident claimed the lives of Mr. Chester’s wife Sarah and daughter Payton.

The families of the dead are furious after reading an article in the Los Angeles Times that said county personnel snapped photos at the crash site and shared them with others.

The county agreed to pay the two families who lost loved ones in the crash $2.5 million (£2.1 million) in November, but Mrs. Bryant refused to accept the settlement.

Last Monday, Mrs. Bryant, who was in tears on the witness stand, recalled reading the LA Times article while spending time with her other children at home.

“I bolted out of the house and I ran to the side of the house so the girls couldn’t see me. I wanted to run… down the block and just scream,” she said.

As a result of learning about the leak, Mrs. Bryant claimed that she felt “blindsided, devastated, hurt, and betrayed” and that she “[lives] in fear every day of…having these images pop up” on social media.

“I don’t ever want to see these photographs,” she said. “I want to remember my husband and my daughter the way they were.”

At the trial, jurors were told how sheriff’s deputies and firefighters snapped horrific cellphone pictures at the scene and displayed them to others, including at a bar and a gala event.

In his opening remarks this week, Mrs. Bryant’s attorney Luis Li argued that these workers’ actions “poured salt in an open wound and rubbed it in.”

It was unsuccessful for a county attorney to make the claim that “site photography is necessary” and that the images had not been made available to the public.

A five-time NBA champion who spent his entire playing career with the LA Lakers, Bryant is regarded as one of the finest players in the history of the sport.

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