A deputy showed images in a bar of Kobe Bryant’s body. Vanessa Bryant now wants justice
LOS ANGELES — Two days after Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash, a young man with a shaved head and muscular, tattooed arms walked into a Norwalk bar and took a seat at the counter. His name was Joey Cruz, a deputy trainee at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Cruz, who had been on patrol just two months, had stood sentry at a trailhead leading to the debris field in the hills above Calabasas in the frenzied aftermath of the crash. People had swarmed to the area — reporters and devastated fans, lookie-loos and seekers of macabre souvenirs — and Cruz had helped keep them away.
Now Cruz sat at the Baja California Bar and Grill 45 miles south, a bottle in his left hand and his phone in his right. Across the world, news and social media were full of tributes to the basketball great, and questions about the Sunday morning crash that killed him, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others.
Cruz had photos of the carnage on his phone, forwarded to him by another deputy. About 9:30 that Tuesday night, bar surveillance footage captured him showing his phone to the bartender. Cruz appeared to make a downward slashing motion with his arm, as if to indicate the nature of the injuries on display.
In a nearby booth sat Ralph Mendez, a 46-year-old real estate investor.
