Celebrating her triumph. Vanessa Bryant spoke out after being awarded $16 million in her trial towards Los Angeles County first responders.
“All for you! I really like you! JUSTICE for Kobe and Gigi!” Bryant, 40, wrote by way of Instagram on Wednesday, August 24, alongside a photograph of herself along with her late husband Kobe Bryant and daughter Gianna.
The trial, which started on August 10, revolved across the January 2020 accident that killed 41-year-old Kobe and 13-year-old Gianna — together with seven different passengers — when the helicopter they had been touring on crashed right into a hillside in Calabasas, California.
The decision, which discovered that the first responders shared pictures of the our bodies of the late NBA icon, fell on what Los Angeles beforehand dubbed in 2016 as “Kobe Bryant Day” – a nod to the basketball participant’s jersey numbers that he wore whereas enjoying on the Lakers.
“#BetOnYourself #Mambaday #Mambamentality,” the mother, who additionally shared daughters Natalia, 19, Bianka, 5, and Capri, 3, with the basketball participant, wrote in her submit together with a bunch of yellow and purple hearts.
Along with Vanessa profitable $16 million on Wednesday, the jury additionally awarded $15 million in damages to Vanessa’s co-plaintiff Chris Chester, whose spouse Sarah and 13-year-old daughter Payton died alongside Kobe and Gianna within the crash.
Vanessa and Chester, for his or her half, sued Los Angeles County for emotional misery and psychological anguish after studying members of the division had shared pictures of the victims’ stays.
Luis Li, Vannesa’s lawyer, made his opening statements earlier this month during which he claimed that cellphone pictures from the wreckage had been shared by the hearth captain “for amusing,” noting that there was no official purpose for them to be taken within the first place.
He additionally acknowledged that on the day of the tragic occasion, first responders “walked across the wreckage and took footage of damaged our bodies from the helicopter crash. They took close-ups of limbs, of burnt flesh. It shocks the conscience.” He argued that the pictures had been then “shared repeatedly with individuals who had completely no purpose to obtain them.”
The lawyer added, “January 26, 2020, was and all the time would be the worst day of Vanessa Bryant’s life,” he advised the jury on the time. “They took and shared footage of Kobe and Gianna as souvenirs. … They poured salt in an unhealable wound.”
On Friday, August 19, Vanessa took the stand and recalled studying concerning the pictures of the victims’ stays allegedly being shared by officers.
“I felt like I wished to run down the block and simply scream. However I couldn’t escape. I can’t escape my physique,” she mentioned. “I dwell in concern each day of being on social media and having these pictures pop up.”
Whereas on the stand, Vanessa described herself as “blindsided, devastated, harm and betrayed” by the existence of the images, explaining that she filed the lawsuit towards the county as a result of she “wished solutions.”
