Vanessa Bryant, the widowed wife of Kobe Bryant, has requested for the acquisition of some items left at Staples Center by the thousands of fans who came to honor and grieve her late husband.
According to Staples Center, L.A. Live and Microsoft Theater president Lee Zeidman, all the items around the area will be taken down on Sunday at the conclusion of the Super Bowl.
“It will have been a week,” Zeidman said. “We have contractually obligated events that are moving in. Vanessa had reached out to us and said, ‘Our family would like the items out there.’ So we’re going to catalog every one of them. By that I mean, T-shirts, letters, basketballs, stuffed animals, toys. We’re going to put those in specially made containers and we’re going to ship them to the family.”
Vanessa Bryant broke her silence on Wednesday with a thoughtful and inspiring message on social media.
Fans flocked to Staples Center almost as soon as they heard of the shocking and untimely passing of the retired Los Angeles Lakers star and his daughter Gianna who were involved in a helicopter crash near Calabasas, Calif., on Sunday.
There were seven other victims who have been identified as pilot Ara Zobayan, baseball coach John Altobelli, his wife Keri and their daughter Alyssa, Sarah and Payton Chester, and Mamba Academy basketball coach Christina Mauser.
The helicopter was on its way to Kobe Bryant’s youth basketball academy amidst foggy weather when tragedy struck.
