Vanessa Bryant shares tribute to late husband Kobe on what would have been his 44th birthday

Vanessa Bryant wished her late husband Kobe Bryant a happy birthday on Instagram this Tuesday, marking the day the late basketball star would have turned 44.

‘Happy birthday, baby! I love you and miss you so much! #44,’ she wrote, sharing a throwback picture of herself cuddling up to her husband.

Her post comes days after she broke down in tears while testifying in a Los Angeles court room on Friday that she lives in constant fear that photographs of the bodies of Kobe and their daughter Gianna will be leaked on social media after officials shared them around.

Bryant sobbed and gasped for air as she described she had to run outside her house so that her daughters wouldn’t see her crying after reading about the existence of the images taken of the helicopter crash scene from January 2020 in the LA Times, according to the New York Post.

The wife of the late NBA legend said she was breastfeeding her youngest child when she heard the news, and said ‘I felt like I wanted to run down the block and scream.’

‘I can’t escape my body. I can’t escape what I feel,’ she said to the court. 

Bryant confessed she suffers severe panic attacks as she fears the graphic images of her dead husband and daughter may one day surface online.

‘I don’t ever want to see my babies in that way,’ she said. ‘Nobody should ever have to see their family that way.’ 

Bryant told the court that County Sheriff Alex Villanueva – who told her there were no survivors of the crash – didn’t tell her that the scene had been photographed.

She said she was ‘blindsided’ and felt ‘betrayed’.

‘I trusted them. I trusted them not to do these things,’ she said. 

Bryant added that she believed officials may have moved the body of her 13-year-old daughter in order to photograph her because of where she was located. 

Bryant is seeking millions in damages from Los Angeles County after learning first responders allegedly sent gory images of her Kobe and Gianna between them. 

Multiple witnesses involved in the incident have testified they have seen the images, forcing Bryant to repeatedly break down over the course of the trial. 

She even had to leave the courtroom last week after a bartender, Victor Gutierrez, testified a sheriff’s deputy had shown him pictures of severed body parts after the crash. 

Earlier this week, LA Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Russell revealed he texted pictures of the wreckage to Santa Clarita Sheriff’s Deputy Ben Sanchez a day after the incident.

Russell said he was playing the popular Call of Duty shooting game with Sanchez when he told the deputy he had photos of the crime scene that he allegedly got from fellow LA Deputy Joey Cruz, TMZ reported.

Los Angeles fire officials allegedly knew sharing graphic pictures of the crash that killed Bryant would land them in hot water as they were dubbed ‘plutonium’ and were ordered to be gotten rid of.

Sky Cornell, a public information officer for the LA County Fire Department, told a jury on Tuesday that first responders went into damage control after it became public that they shared photos of the helicopter crash that killed Bryant, 41, and his daughter, Gianna, 13, in 2020. 

Cornell, who had admitted to investigators that he ‘wanted to see Kobe’ as the pictures were being shared, said an official warned the department about what they were doing, TMZ reported.  

‘Just a reminder folks, there are no secrets! One way or another people get exposed,’ the email read according to Cornell. 

He added that colleague Tony Imbrenda, who admitted to sharing the photos at an awards gala, called the pictures ‘plutonium,’ and that he needed to ‘get rid of them.’  

Imbrenda, another public information officer, was grilled on Wednesday while testifying that he shared pictures of the helicopter crash during the 2020 Golden Mike awards ceremony, a journalism awards gala in Southern California.