Documentary Producer Files Legal Request For Photos, Video & Audio Related To Kobe Bryant Crash, But Says It Doesn’t Want Images Of Victims

deadline.com:

A documentary production company that specializes in videos of arrests and transportation crashes is taking legal action to obtain video through the California Public Records Act regarding the 2020 helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others.

Real World Media LLC — which posts videos to YouTube with titles such as “Hospital interview of man who just escaped murderer” and “27 year old caught with 26 pounds of cocaine” and “Drunk Pilot Crashes Corporate Jet in Nevada” — alleges in a Los Angeles Superior Court petition filed Friday that it has wrongfully been denied access to the information requested. “(Real World Media) is seeking video, audio and photographic records related to the accident and the resulting investigations; (the company) is not seeking post-accident images of the deceased,” the petition states.

The latter-type photos were the focus of a court case that concluded in August in which a Los Angeles federal jury ordered Los Angeles County to pay a combined total of $31 million to Bryant’s widow Vanessa and an Orange County man who lost his daughter and wife in the crash for the mental anguish caused by photos sheriff’s deputies and firefighters took and shared of the crash victims’ bodies.

An LASD representative did not reply to a request for comment on the production company’s filing but, given the recently-settled case, the department is likely to be extremely careful in how it proceeds.