Vanessa Bryant has slammed Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, after he challenged LA Lakers star Lebron James to match a $175,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of an assailant that shot two sheriff deputies last Saturday in Compton.
A lone gunman approached and shot two deputies in their patrol car on Saturday in Compton, California, leaving the unidentified 31-year-old woman and 24-year-old man hospitalised, where they were reported to be in stable condition as of Monday afternoon.
The incident was captured on surveillance video.
During a radio interview Monday, Villanueva challenged James, whose Lakers are now competing in the NBA conference finals, to double a $175,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the attacker.
While James, an outspoken social justice activist in his own right, has not yet given his opinion about the challenge, Bryant has been highlighting how the county sheriff was challenging a private season when it had failed to secure the accident scene at the crash that took her husband, Kobe Bryant.
On her Instagram account, Bryant highlighted a number of posts critical of the sheriff’s department.
“How can he talk about trusting the system?” read one of the screenshotted tweets she posted.
“His sheriff’s dept. couldn’t be trusted to secure Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crash scene, his deputies took and shared graphic photos of crash victims. Vanessa Bryant is suing them.”
Another tweet read: “He shouldn’t be challenging LeBron James to match a reward or ‘to step up to the plate.’ He couldn’t even ‘step up to the plate’ and hold his deputies accountable for photographing dead children.”
Bryant has an ongoing claim against Villanueva’s office that was filed in May.
“No fewer than eight sheriff’s deputies were at the scene snapping cell-phone photos of the dead children, parents, and coaches,” the claim reads, per People magazine.
“As the department would later admit, there was no investigative purpose for deputies to take pictures at the crash site. Rather, the deputies took photos for their own personal purposes.”