A former Los Angeles County fire captain walked off the witness stand three separate times on Monday while being questioned about whether he took photos of Kobe Bryant's remains at the site of the early 2020 helicopter crash that killed the Los Angeles Lakers legend, his 13-year-old daughter, Gigi, and seven others.
According to CNN, Brian Jordan repeatedly left the courtroom when asked about his specific actions on January 26th, 2020 by Vanessa Bryant's lawyers. His attorney, Steven Haney, says his Jordan's abrupt departures weren't related to potential legal ramifications of questioning, but the result “a medical condition associated with his viewing of the crash scene” that “causes him to suffer trauma.
“The only reason I'm sitting here is because someone threw my name into this whole thing,” said Jordan, who claims a fire department supervisor instructed him to take photos of the crash as part of its investigation.
“Maybe that was the day I should have been insubordinate.”
Vanessa Bryant's federal civil lawsuit against Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and Sheriff Alex Villanueva alleges that investigators leaked photos of her late husband's remains to media. L.A. County insists the photographs were a necessary part of the investigation into the crash and that the department adequately contained their spread, arguing the images never surfaced online.
Multiple L.A. County Sheriff's deputies who shared and received the photos in question continued their testimony on Monday. Deputy Joey Cruz admitted to sharing the images with a friend who works outside law enforcement, noting he “shouldn't have done it.”
Villanueva, under scrutiny for overseeing a department that features violent deputy gangs and his refusal to enforce vaccine mandates for L.A. county officers, among other controversies, helped implement a new policy after the death of Kobe Bryant that criminalized the unauthorized taking or sharing of photographs from accident scenes by first responders.
[CNN]
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