Vanessa, the wife of late US basketball star, Kobe Bryant, has been awarded $16 million in damages over leaked graphic photos of the helicopter crash that killed her husband and daughter in 2020.
40-year-old Vanessa said she had panic attacks after learning that the images taken by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and firefighters had been shared.
A federal jury now said the county must pay Mrs Bryant for emotional distress.
According to BBC, co-plaintiff Christopher Chester will be paid $15 million.
Mrs Bryant’s husband Kobe Bryant, aged 41, daughter Gianna, 13, and six family friends died when their helicopter crashed in California in January 2020, while Chester lost his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Payton, in the crash.
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A report by the Los Angeles Times claiming county employees took photos at the crash site and shared them with others has enraged the victims’ families.
Last November, the county agreed to pay $2.5 million over the emotional distress caused to two families who lost relatives in the crash, but Mrs Bryant refused to settle.
Sobbing on the witness stand last week, Mrs Bryant recalled being at home with her other children when she read the LA Times story.
“I bolted out of the house and I ran to the side of the house so the girls couldn’t see me. I wanted to run… down the block and just scream,” she said.
Mrs Bryant said she had felt “blindsided, devastated, hurt and betrayed” by news of the leak and “[lives] in fear every day of… having these images pop up” on social media.
“I don’t ever want to see these photographs. I want to remember my husband and my daughter the way they were,” she said.
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