Los Angeles County firefighters to be fired over Kobe Bryant helicopter crash site photos

The Los Angeles County Fire Department will fire two firefighters and suspend a third employee for allegedly taking photos of the site where a helicopter carrying Kobe Bryant, his daughter and several others crashed last year and sharing them with girlfriends and wives, according to court documents.

The documents were filed as part of an invasion of privacy lawsuit filed by Bryant's widow, Vanessa Bryant, against Los Angeles County over the images, KNBC-TV reported. The suit accuses several Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies of taking and sharing photos – in one case with a bar patron – of the site that show dead bodies and other grizzly details. 

In the case of the patron, a bartender later filed a complaint with the sheriff's office over the photos. Vanessa Bryant revealed the names of the deputies who allegedly shared the photos in March. 

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In the case of the firefighters – none of whom were named in the court filings – two were sent "intention to discharge" letters last December. They allegedly sent photos to a third firefighter who works as a media relations officer and was at the scene. That employee later allegedly shared the images with off-duty firefighters while at an awards ceremony shortly after. 

The third fire employee was given an "intention to suspend" letter. The employment status of all three was not immediately known. The county fire department did not respond to an inquiry from Fox News. 

Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna, were among nine people killed in January 2020 when the helicopter they were traveling in crashed in the Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas. Federal investigators determined the crash was caused by pilot error. 

Sheriff Alex Villanueva condemned the deputies’ behavior and, in a move that has since been heavily criticized, ordered them to delete the photos. The captain of the Malibu-Lost Hills sheriff's station, which oversees the area where the crash occurred, pushed back on the decision but was overruled.

"That was my number one priority to make sure those photos no longer existed," Villanueva told the news station in a March 2020 interview. "Had we done the original, usual routine, which was relieve everybody of duty and everybody lawyers up and all that, that would increase the odds 10-fold that those photos would have somehow made their way into the public domain. And that's definitely what we do not want."

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In response to the scandal, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, last year signed a law that makes it a crime for first responders to take unauthorized photos of deceased people at the scene of an accident or crime.

Bryant will be posthumously inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday. He will be presented by his wife and Michael Jordan. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.