Deputy Admits 'Callous Mistake' Over Kobe Bryant Crash Photos
Kobe Bryant and Gianna Bryant were photographed on July 26, 2018 in Irvine, California. (Photo via Harry How/Getty Images.)
A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who kept on his phone gruesome photos from the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant and daughter Gianna Bryant testified Tuesday that he made “a very callous mistake” when he sent them to another off-duty deputy as they played “Call of Duty.”
“I have a deep remorse for it, sir,” Deputy Michael Russell told lawyer Jerry Jackson, who’s representing Christopher Chester in trial over privacy and negligence claims brought by Chester and Vanessa Bryant against Los Angeles County. Chester’s wife, Sarah Chester, and 13-year-old daughter, Payton Chester, died in the Jan. 26, 2020, crash while traveling from Orange County to Kobe’s Mamba Sports Center in Thousand Oaks for a basketball tournament.
Russell said he was “alleviating a lot of the stress that I had” by playing the single-shooter video game online with his friend and fellow sheriff’s deputy Ben Sanchez and made a mistake by sending Sanchez the photos.
Like other deputies who’ve testified, Russell dismissed previous descriptions of the now-deleted photos, saying he couldn’t remember if he’d warned Sanchez of their gruesomeness before sending them. He also denied telling Sanchez one of the photos contained Kobe’s remains but wavered when presented with a previous statement from Sanchez indicating he had.
Russell also acknowledged writing a three-paragraph internal sheriff’s department memo about the photos that contained five false statements and omissions. The errors included that he’d immediately deleted the photos and concerned the number of the images in his possession. The omissions included a failure to note that he and Sanchez were playing “Call of Duty” when trading the material.
Russell said the misstatements were “mistakes.”
“I wrote the report to the best of my knowledge at the time,” he said.
Russell also acknowledged looking at the photos “two to three” more times while sitting in a recliner in his bedroom. But he said he was looking not at human remains but at the wreckage and overall scene should he ever need to write a report about something similar.
Vanessa Bryant and her lawyer exit court on Aug. 16, 2022. (Photo by Meghann Cuniff/Law&Crime.)
Jackson referred to the activity as a “self study program” and later pressed Russell about his claimed remorsefulness, asking if it had “anything to do with the fact that you hurt my client?”
“Yes, it does,” Russell answered.
And because “you’ve hurt Mrs. Bryant?” Jackson asked.
“Yes,” Russell answered.
Jackson used a similar line of questioning with Deputy Joey Cruz, who sent the photos to Russell while a rookie training to be a patrol deputy. He’d received the photos from his trainer, Deputy Rafael Mejia, who testified Monday he looked at them at home in bed that night while messaging another deputy on Facebook about the conditions of the people who died.
Cruz, who joined the sheriff’s department after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, testified that he also offered to show the photos to a relative at his mother’s home a few hours before he went to the bar.
Cruz also admitted showing the photos to his friend Victor Gutierrez, a bartender at the Baja California Bar & Grill in Norwalk, but he denied showing them to a stranger seated next to him at the bar and said he was instead showing him a funny post on Instagram. That led to a debate during direct, cross, and re-direct examination about what the bar surveillance video shows. Bryant’s lawyer Craig Lavoie showed clips of Cruz showing his phone to the stranger, who shakes his head and turns away, and then to Gutierrez, who spends several seconds looking before grimacing. Cruz also can be seen gesturing with his arm and across his torso.
Cruz denied the discussion was about the photos, and LA County lawyer Mira Hashmall played a clip of the video zoomed in to show that Cruz was scrolling down his phone screen as one would do when browsing Instagram. However, she fast forwarded through a portion of it, so Lavoie played that part for jurors during his re-direct and noted that it shows Cruz no longer scrolling but instead zooming in on something stationary on the screen, such as a photo, then showing it to the stranger seated next to him.
“Defense counsel fast forwarded over that?” Lavoie asked Cruz.
“Yes,” Cruz answered.
“Huh,” Lavoie responded — as if to emphasize the point.
This is a developing story.
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