Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy showed a bartender graphic photos of Kobe Bryant's body. Video evidence showed them laughing afterwards.

• Two key witnesses testified in Vanessa Bryant's trial against LA County on Thursday.
• One of them was the bartender to whom LA Sheriff's Deputy Joey Cruz showed photos of Kobe Bryant's body.

A private citizen said he felt a "sense of betrayal" when a Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy showed grisly photos of Kobe Bryant's dead body to a bartender, who went table-to-table telling patrons and employees about what he had just seen.

On the second day of Vanessa Bryant's trial against Los Angeles County over improper helicopter crash site photos taken and shared of Kobe and Gianna "Gigi" Bryant, key witnesses who were around when the photos were shown in public addressed the court.

Victor Gutierrez, a Norwalk, California, bartender was working at the Baja California Bar and Grill on January 28, 2020, when his friend, LA Sheriff's Deputy Joey Cruz walked in wearing a leather jacket and a white t-shirt. Cruz, then a 4-month trainee of the LASD, had responded to the helicopter crash site on January 26, 2020, where nine people died.

County officials have not denied that Cruz shared the photos at the bar, saying the young trainee's behavior was a "lapse." They maintain the photos did not spread from outside the bar and were deleted shortly after.

Surveillance footage showed Cruz and Gutierrez greeting each other, as Cruz then showed Gutierrez a series of photos on his phone for under a minute. Gutierrez told the court that first, he winced. Moments later, security camera footage showed him and Cruz laughing.

His testimony about the nature of the photos forced Vanessa Bryant to leave the courtroom early.

The security footage of their interaction was key evidence in the trial. It shed more light on how one of the citizen complaints about the photos materialized.

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

In September 2020, Bryant sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the county's fire department, the county as a whole, and eight officers in the wake of reports reported on by the LA Times that first responders took and shared photos of the January 2020 crash site.

Her suit is seeking punitive damages from county defendants who are accused of taking and sharing crash site photos. Bryant is suing the county for negligence, emotional distress, and invasion of privacy claims as well as federal claims which relate to the constitutional right to the images of her deceased loved ones, and LA County agency practices that led to the alleged taking and dissemination of photos.

When Cruz left, video footage showed Gutierrez going up to cooks, coworkers, and customers at tables – at least five separate parties – telling them what he saw. During testimony Thursday, Gutierrez was often forgetful and told the court that he did not remember most of the conversations he had that night.

Gutierrez denied to the court that he and Cruz were laughing at what they looked at on his phone.

"We never laughed about the photos, I'm 100% sure of that – what type of human beings would we be." Gutierrez told the court. "Maybe he was showing a funny video."

Seated at one of the tables that Gutierrez animatedly walked up to was Ralph Mendez Jr., a Norwalk real estate investor who had entered the bar with his adult softball team "Past My Prime" shortly before Cruz left. After they settled in, footage showed Gutierrez approaching them and he "sounded very excited," Mendez told the court.

When Gutierrez told him what Cruz had shared with him, Mendez said he was "in disbelief, disgusted and angry."

Videos showed Gutierrez making motions towards his head, neck, and torso as if to describe the injuries in the photos when speaking with other parties. Gutierrez said he didn't know why he was making those gestures. For Mendez, that interaction was enough to file a citizen complaint. He returned home and drafted a complaint to the LASD in his driveway before he even entered his home because he "had to sleep well that night."

"There was a Deputy at Baja California Bar and Grill who was at the Kobe Bryant crash site, showing photos of his decapitated body," Mendez wrote in the message, adding to the court that he felt a "sense of betrayal," after hearing what Gutierrez had relayed to him.

"He (Cruz) had the public's trust riding on his shoulders," Mendez told the court.