The whistleblower who alerted the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department that one of its deputies was sharing gruesome photos of the crash that killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and seven other passengers said he did not regret reporting the law enforcement officer.
Ralph Mendez was having dinner with a group of his teammates after playing in a softball league game earlier in the night. Two days had passed since the fatal crash that killed Mr Bryant and the others in the aircraft.
According to ABC 7, a bartender at the Baja California Bar and Grill in Norwalk told the men that a sheriff's deputy had been in earlier and was showing people disturbing photos from the crash scene.
"He has pictures, he showed me pictures," Mr Mendez said the bartender told them.
"Pictures of what?" the men asked.
"He began describing what he saw, you know? 'They were all burned,' and he got very graphic with it," Mr Mendez told the outlet.
Mr Mendez claims the bartender said the deputy was laughing while showing the photos, and said that they amused him.
"It just sounded bad," Mr Mendez said. "It just sounded wrong on different levels, whether it's legal or not. Whether it's against, you know, his sheriff's department policy. I don't know. But it just sounded...bad.”
After hearing the story, Mr Mendez submitted an online complaint to the sheriff's department.
"I thought to myself, 'If I don't say something, and it’s true, I don't think I'll ever be able to live with myself," he said.
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