Vanessa Bryant reveals names of officers who allegedly shared photos of Kobe Bryant's helicopter crash scene
Vanessa Bryant won her case with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department earlier in March to allow the names to be released
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Vanessa Bryant took to Instagram on Wednesday to reveal what she presented as parts of her lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff's and Fire departments. The lawsuit is in relation to the death of her husband, Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, and 13-year-old daughter Gianna Bryant, who both died in a helicopter crash last year.
Vanessa shared 12 posts, highlighting the names of the officers she alleges shared photos of the helicopter crash and broke laws in the process. The names highlighted in the post were Joey Cruz, Rafael Mejia, Michael Russell and Raul Versales.
She won her case with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department earlier this month to allow those names to be released.
The lawsuit alleges that photos of the crash scene were shared with others who had no involvement in the investigation of the crash. An investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department revealed one deputy took between 25 to 100 photos on his personal cell phone, many photos highlighting the remains of the victims.
The lawsuit states Mejia kept photos from the crash on his personal phone and that he was sharing them "for no reason other than morbid gossip."
Mejia is accused of sharing the photos with Cruz, who then allegedly shared the photos with Russell. Russell is alleged to have shown them to a family member and to a bartender and people at the bar. One of the patrons emailed a complaint to the Sheriff's department after saying they heard Russell describing the photos at the sports bar in question.
Russell is also alleged to have shared the photos with an officer from another police station and Versales is also accused of having saved the photos on his personal phone and then sharing them with people outside of the investigation.
The suit claims that many officers named lied about having the photos and their knowledge of the photos.
