By Alicia Victoria Lozano and Corky Siemaszko -
NBC News
Vanessa Bryant broke down in tears Friday in a California court, describing the anguish she felt when she saw leaked photos of the helicopter crash that killed her husband, NBA superstar Kobe Bryant, and their teenage daughter in January 2020. .
Bryant shuddered with tears and his body seemed to tremble as he spoke between sighs.
When she read in the Los Angeles Times that photos of the accident had been published, she said she ran out of her house so her daughters wouldn't see her cry.
“I felt like I wanted to run and scream,” she said from the stand, “I can't get out of my body.
I can't escape what I feel."
Kobe Bryant poses with his family at the Staples Center in Los Angeles 2017Getty Images
Bryant said she felt "shocked, devastated, hurt and betrayed" by the county employees who leaked the photos, but clarified that she hasn't seen them.
"I don't want to see these pictures again," she said,
"I want to remember them as they were
. "
[The trial for the dissemination of the photos of the accident in which Kobe Bryant died]
Still, Bryant says she's terrified just thinking that one day she might find the photos online: "I live in fear, I live in fear every day of opening social media and seeing the images."
Bryant's testimony came on the eighth day of the invasion of privacy trial in federal court in Los Angeles.
She has attended every day of the trial, sometimes wiping away tears and sometimes walking out of the courtroom when especially painful testimony or evidence was presented.
Kobe Bryant's wife left court when they started talking about photos of their dead daughter
Aug. 12, 202201:46
Bryant and Chris Chester, whose wife, Sarah, and daughter Payton also died in the crash, are seeking millions of dollars in damages for distress caused by the unauthorized release of the footage by sheriff's deputies and the Fire Department.
Los Angeles County agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle a similar lawsuit brought by relatives of other victims of the Jan. 26, 2020 crash. But Bryant and Chester declined to be part of the settlement.
[A judge orders to inform Kobe Bryant's widow of the names of the agents who leaked his photos]
Earlier this week, Chester said he is seeking "justice" for the anxiety and "nervousness" as a result of the leaked photos.
"The photos have been seen," he said on the stand, "nothing dies on the Internet, it's pain added to pain."
Chester said he has carefully protected his family, especially his teenage children, from seeing the photos of the accident and the coroner's report.
The state in which the remains of his wife and daughter were found was so appalling that even the coroner told him that it was better that he not see them.
But the story about the photos in the Los Angeles Times only added to her anguish.
Bryant's attorney, Luis Li, told the jury that cellphone photos taken by a fire captain and his deputy were "visual gossip" for "laughs" with no official function.
A bartender confirmed that a sheriff's deputy showed him a photo of Kobe Bryant's burned torso
Aug. 12, 202200:23
According to the lawyer, Bryant and Chester found out about the publication of the photos from the aforementioned newspaper, not from the county.
He also showed jurors a video of one of the firefighters showing photos of the accident on his phone to a bartender.
"January 26, 2020 was the worst day in Vanessa Bryant's life," he said. "The county made that even worse, rubbed salt in the wound and rubbed it in."