What did Vanessa Bryant say? Kobe Bryant's widow testifies about leaked crash photos

On August 19, Vanessa Bryant testified against the leak of gruesome photos from the helicopter crash that killed her husband Kobe Bryant and their 13-year-old daughter Gianna.

Kobe Bryant was an American basketball star who was on-board a helicopter that crashed in Calabasas, California, on January 26, 2020.

Two accounts of the leak have surfaced so far. The first is that of a sheriff's deputy reportedly showing the photos to a bartender while drinking. The second account pins blame on firefighters, who allegedly circulated the crash images at an awards banquet. Recalling her reaction upon reading a Los Angeles Times story about the leak, Vanessa said:

“I felt like I wanted to run, run down the block and scream... It was like the feeling of wanting to run down a pier and jump into the water. The problem is I can’t escape. I can’t escape my body.”

She is now suing Los Angeles County, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the Los Angeles County Fire Department for a privacy invasion over the leaked pictures.

While no images have surfaced online so far, she added that she lives in "fear" that the photos will somehow make it to social media.

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Exploring Vanessa Bryant's testimony about Kobe and Gianna Bryant's crash images

Vanessa Bryant and Kobe Bryant. (Image via Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images)

Vanessa Bryant appeared in federal court on Friday, where during a three-hour-long testimony, she stated that the leaked photos of the incident left her feeling "helpless" and "disgusted."

She added that she was only beginning to grieve the loss of her husband and daughter when, on February 27, 2020, in a Los Angeles Times story, she read that officials from the Sheriff's Department and Fire Department had clicked and shared photos from the scene, just days after the crash.

Vanessa mentioned that the news came as a shock and left her "devastated" and "hurt." She added:

"I bolted out of the house and around to the side so my girls wouldn’t see... I was blindsided again, devastated, hurt. I trusted them. I trusted them not to do these things.”

She further said that her constant anxiety about the pictures somehow landing on social media leads to her having frequent panic attacks. She noted:

"I live in fear every day of being on social media and these popping up... The grief is from their loss... The fear and anxiety is from those photos."

During her cross-examination by the lawyer representing LA County, Vanessa said that she has neither received any medical diagnosis for the panic attacks, nor taken any medications. She said she spoke to a therapist until 18 months after the crash, but she does not anymore.

She added:

"I feel like sometimes it helps... but sometimes it’s completely draining."

According to The Guardian, Vanessa Bryant cried frequently during the testimony and when asked to describe her life before the demise of her husband and their daughter, she recalled ""proud girl-dad" Kobe as being a "beautiful and devoted father."

When LA County's lawyer, J Mira Hashmall, said that deputy Doug Johnson took the photos to assess the tragic situation, Vanessa responded by pointing out how it was not necessary. She said:

"I don’t think you need to take close-up photos of people to determine how many people are on an aircraft... I think he could have just counted.”

Insider reported that LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva claimed that his agency investigators did a good job of checking cloud accounts and phones for the photos, since nothing "popped up on social media." When asked whether they had been permanently deleted, Villanueva did not have a confirmed answer.

Vanessa Bryant's side rested its case following her testimony, which came on the eighth day of the trial.