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

Deputy Doug Johnson, who first summited to the helicopter crash site, told the court that he took at least 25 photos "of any victims that I thought could be victims," because of the gruesome nature of the crash.

In an internal LASD interview, he had said that he was instructed to take photos by Deputy Raul Versales at the command post but admitted in court that Versales had not specifically asked him to take photos of human remains – only to document the scene. In that interview, he described in vivid detail the photos of remains he had snapped.

"Photographs are the most thorough way of documenting something, especially if evidence or a scene is destroyed," Johnson said. Johnson testified in court that 10 of the photos he took were graphic or contained human remains.

Before Johnson had testified, LASD Malibu search and rescue lead David Katz told the court that Johnson informed him he had taken "hundreds of photos," when they met on the mountain. Johnson would go on to airdrop all of his photos to then-LACFD fire captain Brian Jordan.

"I know I didn't do anything wrong," Johnson said, adding that taking photos of remains at accidents or crime scenes is a "common practice."

Retired LACFD fire captain Brian Jordan delivered the most hostile, dramatic testimony of the trial as he stormed off the stand three times when asked about what he did at the crash site.

The retired fire official testified that he took approximately 25 to 30 photos at the scene of the helicopter crash but told the courtroom that he didn't remember anything specific about them.

"I don't remember the accident," Jordan testified. "I don't remember what I did," later adding that he "may have been ordered to cover someone up."

Jordan said he was told "take pictures, take pictures, take pictures," by fire chief Anthony Marrone. During Marrone's testimony, he denied giving the order, saying that he told his staff "to be sensitive with photography that they took," partially because he had learned that Kobe Bryant might have been one of the victims as he relayed the instruction.

His boss added that he never assigned Jordan to the crash site, but that Jordan went to the crash site voluntarily, on his day off.

Deputies Raul Versales and Rafael Mejia were manning the makeshift command post set up at the Las Virgenes Water District on the day of the crash.

By nightfall, they had both helped share the graphic crash photos with at least four other deputies. On the stand, Versales disputed Johnson's claim that he had ordered photos of the crash site.

"All of us at the command post, including myself, we did not request photographs," Versales testified. "I was surprised to receive them because I was not expecting them," he added in an internal LASD interview.

Mejia said he received 15 to 20 photos, and selected 10 that he sent to his then-trainee, Deputy Joey Cruz. Although he said that no photos were graphic on the stand, in an internal interview he admitted that a handful of the photos contained "a hand, a foot."

A sergeant with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputies who set up the makeshift command post at the base of the mountain where Kobe Bryant's helicopter crashed gave a waffled recollection of the day's events.

In internal interviews after the crash, Sgt. Travis Kelly told LASD investigators that he hadn't ordered his staff to take photos at the crash site. Deputy Raul Versales, in his internal interview, said the same, and added that no one at the command post requested the photos.

Kelly flip-flopped, telling the court that "I asked for someone to take photos." He said that he didn't oversee the radio channels but expected someone to relay the instruction over the radio.

In court, he defended his staff who took up-close photos of human remains, saying "it's part of the scene," adding that he eventually received 10 to 15 photos and deleted them after sending a selection to NTSB investigators.

But in his internal affairs interview, he had said that there was "a photo I will never forget," that he received among graphic crash site photos, adding that "if it was my loved ones, I would not want to remember them in this way."

Two days after the crash, Deputy Joey Cruz showed the photos to Victor Gutierrez, a bartender in Norwalk, California, after unsuccessfully trying to show them to his niece.

"Did you see a person you understood to be Kobe Bryant in the photos that Cruz showed you?" Bryant attorney Craig Lavoie asked Gutierrez in court. "Yes," Gutierrez said, adding that he did not know if there were others in the photos because "there were just parts."

In court, Cruz denied that he showed specific, graphic photos of Kobe Bryant. Gutierrez told a table of customers that he saw "Kobe Bryant's decapitated body" in the photos Cruz showed him, according to Ralph Mendez, who was sitting at the table and testified during the trial.

The behavior upset Mendez so much that he filed a complaint with the LASD.

Private citizen Luella Weireter said she was still in mourning when she attended the 70th Annual Golden Mike Awards gala days after the crash on Feb 5, 2020 with her husband, who is a public information officer for the LA Fire Department.

She lost her cousin and in-law in the crash and later witnessed LA County Fire Department public information officer Tony Imbrenda, huddled with colleagues, viewing crash site photos.

At one point during the awards ceremony, Weireter said she walked into a cocktail room where she saw Imbrenda and his partner, as well as Fire Captain Sky Cornell and his girlfriend, and another firefighter with his partner all huddled around Imbrenda's phone.

As the group dispersed, Weireter alleged that Imbrenda's wife excitedly asked Weireter to look at the photos of Kobe from the crash that the group had just previously been observing. Weireter also testified that she heard Cornell say, "I can't believe I just looked at Kobe's burnt up body and I'm about to eat."

Imbrenda said he "adamantly denied" that he showed graphic up-close photos of Kobe's body, and said that the conversation was just firefighters "talking shop" and analyzing the mechanics of the helicopter and challenges of the accident response. He claimed that Weireter was "mistaken."

Cornell denied saying the comment about Kobe Bryant, but in an internal interview Cornell said, "I wanted to see Kobe, to be honest."

On January 29, 2020 — just three days after the crash — private citizen Rafael Mendez filed a complaint with the LASD after he witnessed Deputy Joey Cruz show a bartender graphic photos of the helicopter crash. Valdez, as a media relations captain, was tasked with investigating the complaint, according to emails shown in court.

By January 31, Valdez testified that he had retrieved security footage from the bar of Cruz showing the photos. He had also spoken with Mendez, who filed the complaint.

He was also helping to relay Sheriff Alex Villanueva's department-wide order for staff to delete all photos.

But when a Los Angeles Times reporter began probing into the complaint in late February, the department played dumb. Valdez, Villanueva, and another media relations staff member lied to the journalist, Valdez testified, denying any knowledge of the complaint or deletion order.

"We're such a large organization, Valdez told The Times. "I'm unaware of any complaint."

In court, Valdez admitted that the helicopter crash victims' family members learned about the complaint, existence of the photos, and deletion order by way of the LA Times story materializing, and not from the agency proactively. He also testified that the department never did reach out to Chester about the photos or deletion order.

Disagreeing with previous interviews from March 2020, where he said that only the coroner's office and NTSB should have taken photos, Villanueva testified that information he's gleaned since then about the brush fire and the threat of "looky-loos" at the crash site meant that some of his staff did the right thing by taking photos at the crash scene to "preserve the scene" for federal investigators.