On Monday, the fourth day of the trial, photos of Kobe and his wife were shown to the jury.
Several key Los Angeles Sheriff's deputies gave testimony on Monday.
The LA sheriff's deputy said that curiosity got the best of him.
A Federal courtroom in downtown Los Angeles got an inside look at why a Los Angeles Sheriff's deputy waited four days to remove gruesome crash site photos from the helicopter crash that killed Kobe and nine others.
One law enforcement officer admitted to sharing the photos at a bar.
The deputy said that he shared the photos with other staff members because he was curious.
The deputy who helped him set up a makeshift command post at the base of the mountain was Andrew Versales.
The command post was aware of the possibility that Kobe Bryant was on the plane. Versales received 30 photos of the crash from deputy Doug Johnson. Versales denied the allegations in court on Monday.
Versales was surprised that he received them. He gave the photos to Mejia, who was stationed at the command post with Ruby Cable and his own training student. He shared the pictures with Cruz and Cable.
Cruz shared the pictures at a bar in California.
Mejia saidcuriosity got the best of us when he was asked why he shared the photos.
Mejia said it was in our nature.
He received a call from his superior on January 30, 2020, telling him that the Sheriff had ordered all personnel who reported to the crash scene to remove the crash site. Mejia deleted the photos from his phone after they spread to at least five other staff members' phones.
Mejia said that he wouldn't do it again.
Audio from Versales' internal interview shows that he turned his phone over to LASD investigators, who used his texts and photos for two minutes. Cruz would show some of the photos to the bartender.
Mejia and Versales gave shaky accounts of why they took and shared the photos. They said it was not the first time they had used cell phones to take pictures.
Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and the baseball coach were on their way to a girls basketball game when their helicopter crashed. The pilot of the plane, Ara Zobayan, died in the crash.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the county's fire department, the county as a whole, and eight officers were sued by a woman for violating her loved ones' constitutional rights in the wake of reports that first responders took and shared up- close photos of remains at a funeral
Craig Lavoie backed Mejia into disagreeing with the LASD Sheriff, who in a March 30, 2020 interview said that there were only two groups of people that should take photos.
Attorneys for the County have maintained that the first responders needed to take site photography to relay the nature of the scene, considering the crash, weather conditions and ensuing media frenzy.
After the incident, the deputies received Performance Log entries, a slap on the wrist typically reserved for shoddy grooming or attire, and after citizen complaints were filed about the photos being shown in public.
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