Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva was questioned under oath on Wednesday by attorneys representing the widow of Kobe Bryant. Vanessa Bryant filed a lawsuit against the county last year alleging deputies of sharing cellphone photos taken at the site of the helicopter crash that killed her husband and their 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, along with seven others.
Villanueva reportedly heard of allegations that a deputy trainee revealed the photos on his phone to someone in a Norwalk bar. He opened an investigation into the matter, but concluded "deleted the photos from their phones ... months before" Vanessa Bryant filed suit.
Bryant has claimed she and her family have been harassed with messages containing copies of the leaked images. The suit alleged such unauthorized dissemination resulted in severe emotional distress to her and remaining family.
Lawyers for the county tried to block Villanueva from having to be deposed, claiming the sheriff had no information beyond what was already known to the plaintiffs. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles F. Eick rejected that argument last month.
It is not known how long the deposition took or what new information, if any, was unearthed.
County attorneys insist any publicly disseminated photos of the crash site did not come from LASD personnel.
"The department determined that all personnel who had taken, shared, or received crash-site photos had, in fact, deleted them," they said. "No one had sent a photo to anyone outside LASD. To this day, and despite media hyperbole about 'leaked' photos, no county crash-site photos have ever been publicly disseminated."
Bryant is seeking unspecified compensatory damages.
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