Vanessa Bryant to donate $16M verdict to Mamba and Mambacita Foundation
Vanessa Bryant will likely be donating the $16 million verdict she was awarded in her case towards Los Angeles County to the Mamba and Mambacita Sports Foundation — the nonprofit group based by her late husband, a report stated.
The group, launched by Kobe Bryant after his retirement in 2016 because the Mamba Sports Foundation — a nod to his nickname, The Black Mamba — supplies funding and sports activities programming for younger athletes in underserved communities, in accordance to its website.
Vanessa Bryant stated Thursday she was donating the verdict proceeds to the muse to “to shine a light on Kobe and Gigi’s legacy,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
The basis was later renamed in 2020 after the 41-year-old NBA legend and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, had been killed in a helicopter crash, in accordance to the report.
A federal jury dominated Wednesday that LA County should pay Vanessa Bryant $16 million after first responders snapped and shared grisly pictures of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed her husband, daughter and seven others.
The jurors additionally awarded $15 million to plaintiff Chris Chester, who lost his spouse, Sarah, and daughter Payton within the Calabasas, California, accident.
“From the beginning, Vanessa Bryant has sought only accountability, but our legal system does not permit her to force better policies, more training or officer discipline,” her legal professional Luis Li stated in an announcement to the paper. “Those measures are the responsibility of the sheriff’s and fire departments — responsibilities that Mrs. Bryant’s efforts have exposed as woefully deficient, even giving amnesty to the wrongdoers.”
After an 11-day trial, jurors unanimously discovered that the LA County Sheriff’s Department violated the constitutional rights of Bryant and Chester after they failed to prepare their workers on accident scene picture-sharing protocol.
In his assertion, Li advised The Times Bryant and Chester “brought to light the decades old practice of taking and sharing photos of accident and crime victims for no legitimate purpose.”
“It is Mrs. Bryant’s hope that this important civil rights case will put to a stop this abhorrent and callous behavior,” he added.
During the trial, Bryant and Chester’s attorneys chronicled how pictures of the victims’ stays from the crash scene had been shared between workers from LA County sheriff’s and hearth departments and seen by a few of their spouses.
The pictures haven’t been made public, however Bryant, 40, testified that the prospect of the pictures being leaked made her “fear every day of being on social media and these popping up.”
