The Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy, who took close-up shots of dead bodies from the helicopter crash scene that killed Kobe Bryant and his teenage daughter, testified in federal court on Friday. He claimed he merely followed a directive to take pictures of the site at that time.
The deputy, Douglas Johnson, said that Raul Versales, another sheriff's deputy stationed at his command post, instructed him to shoot photos of the scene per a report from USA Today.
Johnson claimed to have taken roughly 25 pictures, some of which featured mangled torsos and a close-up shot of a shin "and foot that had black skin tone."
The truthfulness of both of those claims, however, was questioned in court on Friday by the lawyers for Kobe Bryant's widow Vanessa Bryant, and Chris Chester, a financial adviser who lost his wife and daughter in the same tragedy.
Versales Denies Request For Photographs
When Eric Tuttle, a lawyer for Bryant, asked if he was aware that deputy Versales "denied requesting images" on January 26, 2020, LA County Deputy Johnson said, "I'm not."
Then Tuttle played an audio interview with Versales that had previously been recorded by investigators for the sheriff's internal affairs division, known as "Exhibit 111-A."
"All of us at the command post, including myself, we did not request photographs," Versales said on the recording played in court.
Johnson stated during questioning by a lawyer for Bryant that he texted the command post deputy the 25 images and air-dropped them to an unnamed county fire supervisor.
The following year in Las Vegas, he claimed to have lost the phone.
Attorneys for Bryant and Chester claim that after Johnson forwarded the Kobe Bryant Crash Photo, at least 10 other people saw them, some of whom allegedly showed them to the general public.
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Sharing Photos of Dead Bodies, a Common Practice
On the third day of the trial, Johnson claimed he never considered it improper to have death photographs on his personal cell phone, as reported by CBS News. He claimed that sending and receiving pictures of corpses was "common practice" among law enforcement officers.
The deputy testified before the jury in downtown Los Angeles that he had "thousands of times" taken pictures at crime and accident scenes using his phone.
After returning home that evening, according to Johnson, he erased all the pictures he had taken at the scene of the helicopter crash as well as a text conversation with the deputy at the command post.
"I know I didn't do anything wrong," he said on the stand and admitted he didn't recall ever learning at the academy that family members have rights regarding the death images of loved ones.
Before Johnson's testimony, which included accounts of the victims' severe injuries, Bryant fled the courtroom.
Per ET, Vanessa Bryant brought a lawsuit against the L.A. County Sheriff's Department for allegedly posting images of the Calabasas, California, crash scene from January 26 that claimed nine lives, including Kobe and Gianna in May 2020. She filed a complaint in September of the following year for negligence, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of mental distress, asking for unspecified penalties, including punitive damages.
According to the lawsuit, eight sheriff's deputies snapped cellphone pictures of her late husband and daughter's bodies for their own use.
