12 times LA County first responders contradicted themselves during the Kobe Bryant crash photos trial

Azmi HarounAug 27, 2022, 05:13 IST

Vanessa Bryant, the widow of Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant, leaves the U.S. Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2022. She is suing the county for graphic photos taken by first responders at the scene of the helicopter crash that killed her husband.Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Vanessa Bryant and Chris Chester secured a mammoth $31 million verdict against LA County.
They sued the county after cops and fire staff took and shared graphic photos from the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash.

A Los Angeles jury awarded Vanessa Bryant $16 million in damages for emotional distress in her trial against Los Angeles County first responders who took and shared photos of Kobe and Gianna Bryant's remains at the site where their helicopter crashed on January 26, 2020.

Chris Chester, whose wife Sarah and daughter Payton were also aboard the helicopter, was awarded $15 million after he and Bryant took on the county in a joint trial.

Throughout the trial, contradictions morphed into a theme – something Bryant and Chester both pointed out during their testimonies. Ultimately, the conflicting testimonies muddied what role key witnesses played at the crash site, while internal department interviews sometimes offered a clearer look to jurors.

A county attorney accused Bryant's team of nitpicking audio snippets from internal department investigations, but those interviews also provided part of a roadmap as to who ordered the photos, what they showed, and why the staff disseminated the photos.

Bryant and Chester also levied criticism of the LASD and LACFD officials who testified in the trial. Bryant said that there has been "a lot of finger-pointing." Chester said there were "inconsistencies" in the testimonies of the first responders as he sought answers.

"It seems like the number of photos keeps getting smaller as people take the stand – we went from 100 to 10 photos," Chester said.

As the deputies and captains implicated in the spread of the photos took the stand one by one over the past two weeks, they offered myriad reasons for why they took, and then shared, the graphic photos: curiosity got the better of them; they believed it was part of their job; or, as two back-to-back deputies testified, it was a way to "alleviate stress."

Attorneys for the county have maintained that the photos are "permanently deleted," and that first responders needed to take "site photography" to relay to the command post the nature of the scene, considering the crash, weather conditions, and ensuing media frenzy.

The county had no comment on the testimonies of the first responders.

Here are some of the ways that those first responders contradicted themselves and their colleagues throughout the high-stakes trial.

Two Sheriff's Deputies had different recollections about the first batch of graphic crash photos

A small memorial is left near the scene, upper, left, of a helicopter crash that killed former NBA basketball player Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, in Calabasas, Calif.(AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

The boss of a retired fire captain who stormed off of the stand three times challenged his staff's testimonies

A bronze sculpture honoring former Los Angeles Lakers NBA basketball player Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna Bryant, and the names of those who died, is displayed at the site of a 2020 helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif, on Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022.(AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)

Fire captains were conflicted about the graphic nature of the photos, and who ordered them to take them

In an internal LACFD interview, Brian Jordan said there were graphic photos – something he claimed he could not recall on the stand.

LA Sheriff's Deputy Doug Johnson said that after he airdropped Jordan his photos, "he asked where the bodies are at." Johnson claimed that he led Jordan to every victim or set of remains and Jordan took photos.

"Captain Brian Jordan tarnished his dignity that day," Marrone, unflinching, testified, adding that he never asked fire captain Arlin Kahan to take photos of the bodies on January 27, 2020, the day after the crash.

Kahan's photos, which included a "partially covered torso," per internal interviews, would later be sent to public information officer Tony Imbrenda, who showed them to colleagues at a gala.

Two cops who shared the photos with a web of colleagues on the day of the crash contradicted colleagues, and their boss

Vanessa Bryant, center, the widow of Kobe Bryant, leaves a federal courthouse in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022. Kobe Bryant's widow is taking her lawsuit against the Los Angeles County sheriff's and fire departments to a federal jury, seeking compensation for photos deputies shared of the remains of the NBA star, his daughter and seven others killed in a helicopter crash in 2020.(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Some deputies mistakenly said they deleted photos the night of the crash, and disagreed about the necessity of the photos

Deputy Raul Versales eventually sent the photos to Deputy Rafael Mejia who shared them more widely among colleagues.

Once the deputies were called in to delete photos four days after the crash and two days after a deputy had shown the photos in a bar, Mejia and others signed a department memo saying that he had deleted the photos directly after receiving them – even though he held onto them for four days.

Vanessa Bryant's attorney Craig Lavoie backed Mejia, who maintained the photos were necessary and not graphic, into disagreeing with LASD Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who in a March 30, 2020 interview said that "there were only two groups of people that should be taking photos – the NTSB and the coroner's office."

The sergeant who set up the command post to respond to the helicopter crash had a waffled recollection

Kobe Bryant.Matt Sayles/AP Images

The Deputy who shared photos at the bar offered a patchy look at the dissemination

Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna Bryant.(AP Photo/Michael Owen Baker)

The Deputy who shared the photos while firing up Call of Duty contradicted himself

Another Deputy, Michael Russell, claimed he only shared general crash site photos of debris, but was contradicted by his own internal interview.

He claimed the pictures were meant to help them understand the magnitude of the crash and help them learn how to deal with the accident.

"I wasn't expecting dismembered bodies," Russell said in an internal interview, recalling when he received the photos from a colleague. The day after the crash, Russell warned his fellow deputy Ben Sanchez about the graphic nature of the photos and sent him 3 to 4 photos as they loaded up a game of Call of Duty.

The court heard that Russell had lied about photos being "immediately deleted" in his LASD memo that he wrote following the Sheriff's deletion order, as he had sent them to Sanchez the day after the crash while off-duty.

Firefighters and a private citizen had a vastly different recollection of how the graphic photos were displayed at a gala

Firefighters work the scene of a helicopter crash where former NBA basketball star Kobe Bryant died in Calabasas, Calif., Jan. 26, 2020.(AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)

One of the former top media liaisons for the LASD was caught in a lie by a reporter before the trial, and again on the stand

In this July 26, 2018, file photo former Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna watch during the U.S. national championships swimming meet in Irvine, Calif. Federal investigators say wreckage from the helicopter that crashed last month and killed Bryant, his daughter and seven others did not show any outward evidence of engine failure, the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday, Feb. 7, 2020.(AP Photo/Chris Carlson,File)

The LA County Sheriff backtracks and disagrees with his previous media interviews

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva (R) speaks at a press conference on November 2, 2021.Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Sheriff Alex Villanueva said he has never seen a 'death book'

Sheriff Alex Villanueva also denied having seen a "death book," even though he had acknowledged the existence and persistence of them in a string of interviews after the photo scandal became public.

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