The widow of a man fatally shot aboard a Brooklyn subway train reportedly intends to file a $28.5 million lawsuit against New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, alleging that workers leaked gory photos of the scene - in a case echoing one brought by the widow of basketball legend Kobe Bryant.
Richard Henderson, 45, was gunned down while trying to break up a fight between two other men aboard a Manhattan-bound 3 train on Jan. 14, according to authorities.
While Henderson was still clinging to life, an MTA employee took photos of him "laying in a pool of his own blood," widow Jakeba Dockery alleged in a notice of claim filed Friday, according to the New York Post. A notice of claim precedes the filing of a lawsuit against a municipal body.
"I can't believe my husband is gone," Dockery told the Post. "To see him in his own blood, it hurts me."
The gruesome photos allegedly circulated among MTA employees, before making their way onto social media - where she and the couple's three children saw them, said Dockery, who was married to the beloved school crossing guard and grandfather for 20 years.
"It was hard to explain their father on the train with his own blood," Dockery told the Post.
Dockery reportedly intends to sue the MTA for $28.5 million, the same sum awarded last year to Vanessa Bryant after California first responders similarly leaked photos from the scene of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed her retired NBA star husband, their 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven others.
"Just like the family of the late Kobe Bryant was entitled to damages from Los Angeles County ... the family of Richard Henderson - a real life hero here in New York City - is entitled to damages from the appropriate government agency for the unauthorized release and publication by employees of grisly photos of him at death's door," said Dockery's attorneys, Sanford Rubenstein and Mark Shirian, in a statement to the Post.
Dockery's notice of claim alleges that, after seeing the images, she "has suffered, and continues to suffer, severe emotional distress."
"That image is always in my head," she said.
The MTA declined comment to the Post on Friday.
Police are yet to announce an arrest in Henderson's fatal shooting.
