Brian Bailey, a band teacher at James A. Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, was recorded making negative comments about NBA legend Kobe Bryant just hours after the future Hall of Famer passed away along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and 7 others in a helicopter crash on Sunday, January 26.
Bailey was blaming Bryant for the crash, while also calling him a “horrible person”, “selfish”, and a “rapist.”
The rant from Bailey was recorded by a student and shared on Instagram.
“What made him a great basketball player also made him a horrible basketball player and a horrible person,” Bailey says in the video, as transcribed by CBS Los Angeles. “That guy raped a girl and got away with it, he raped her, his money and his power got away with raping a young lady. If it was any of you, you’d be in jail. He cheated on his wife, he raped a young girl, he was a selfish b******. Someone needs to say it.
“Is there any reason in God’s green earth you need to take a helicopter from Orange County to Calabasas? It’s a 40-mile drive, and from the time it takes you to drive to the airport and drive to another airport and get in a car, that’s 40 minutes also. Any by being selfish and by not being able to wait and all that stuff, he killed his family.”
Garfield principal Andres Favela sent a message to parents about the incident: “We recently learned that negative comments about Kobe Bryant were made in a classroom…We also ask that everyone please be sensitive to others when discussing tragic events both inside and outside of the classroom.”
Our deepest condolences continue to go out to the Bryant family, and the families of the other 7 victims — John Altobelli, Keri Altobelli and Alyssa Altobelli, Christina Mauser, Sarah Chester and Payton Chester, and pilot Ara Zobayan — who tragically lost their lives.
