Fireplace captain denies employing Kobe Bryant crash shots as ‘party trick’ at cocktail hour

By Nouran Salahieh and Jason Kravarik | VFAB

In court docket Wednesday, a Los Angeles County fireplace captain denied using pictures from the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant and 8 other people as a “party trick” when he confirmed the photos through an awards ceremony cocktail hour.

Fire Captain Tony Imbrenda’s testimony was section of a federal civil lawsuit brought by Bryant’s widow, Vanessa Bryant, that alleges LA County invaded her privateness and unsuccessful to absolutely have the unfold of the shots, inflicting psychological distress. Christopher Chester, whose spouse and daughter also died in the crash, is a co-plaintiff. Equally he and Bryant allege they live in panic of the pics re-surfacing on the net.

Imbrenda served as a community information and facts officer the working day of the crash. In February 2020, though at the Radio and Tv News Association of Southern California’s Golden Mike awards, a discussion began amongst a number of fire division general public data officers about the reaction that day and Imbrenda’s purpose in it, the captain testified.

In the course of the discussion, Imbrenda explained he pulled out his cellphone and showed some pictures from the crash — primarily of the debris field, he explained to the court, but some of the visuals did have human remains.

“I did not believe I was violating any policy. … In retrospect, I really feel that that wasn’t a great choice, it wasn’t my best judgment,” Imbrenda stated.

But Imbrenda taken care of he was sharing what he thought of to be academic facts with other community info officers. “I felt the dialogue was ideal, the placing was not,” he stated.

In addition to photographs taken by Imbrenda the working day immediately after the crash, he testified that he gained dozens of photos of the site from many people — such as from cellular phone figures he didn’t figure out — since he asks staff to send out him incident photos as a portion of his job.

Fire captain denies showing visuals of Bryant

The awards present incident arrived to gentle just after the wife of an LA firefighter, Luella Weireter, who was with the group during cocktail hour, filed an formal grievance with a battalion main at a county hearth station in Malibu.

Weireter is the cousin of Keri Altobelli, who, alongside with her partner John and daughter Alyssa, died in the identical helicopter crash.

Previous week, Weireter testified in court that she observed Imbrenda share the photographs of the crash internet site and Bryant’s stays at the function. Weireter characterized it as being like a bash trick, testifying she observed 1 firefighter crack away from the team, expressing, “I cannot think I just looked at Kobe’s burnt up human body, and now I’m about to try to eat.”

For the duration of his testimony Wednesday, Imbrenda regularly pressured that human remains weren’t the subjects of the images he experienced, and they as an alternative were “debris subject photos that have human remains in them” and “overall photographs of the incident.”

Imbrenda denied displaying shots of Kobe Bryant’s continues to be or even having shots of his entire body. He explained he frequented the web-site a day following the crash, by which time any identifiable system sections were possibly lined or eradicated from the scene.

He also explained he didn’t know a victim’s spouse and children member was present at the occasion.

When asked by Jerome Jackson, an attorney symbolizing Chester, regardless of whether he utilised the photos “like a celebration trick,” Imbrenda said, “Absolutely not.”

“You assume she produced it up?” Jackson asked.

“I consider she is mistaken,” Imbrenda replied.

Imbrenda also denied a claim by Weireter that his girlfriend excitedly referred to as her in excess of to look at the shots. “Maybe (Weireter) was mistaken as to who she was talking to, but she was not talking to my girlfriend,” Imbrenda mentioned.

The captain explained that at the time he was exhibiting the pictures, the firefighters’ girlfriends and wives had been standing separate from the four personnel talking about the crash. “I would not interact in that conversation with civilian wives and girlfriends,” he explained.

When questioning Imbrenda, lawyers for the plaintiffs also confirmed the court docket a clip from an interview with Captain Erik Scott of the LA Town Fireplace Department, an additional information officer who attended the gala. In the clip, Scott advised county investigators “there may possibly have been a torso or any person bent in half” in the shots he noticed.

Scott took the witness stand immediately after Imbrenda on Wednesday. He testified that the aim of the discussion at the gala was to master from Imbrenda, but agreed human remains could be seen in some of the pics they scrolled via. He reported their transient search at the images did not heart on the human stays.

“It was centered on the large affect crash,” Scott mentioned, adding that they talked about the fog that working day, the speed of the helicopter and Imbrenda’s reaction to the media and the information conferences.

Jackson asked Scott: “Did seeing a torso enrich your potential to be a PIO?”

“No,” Scott replied.

The-VFAB-Wire
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