Vanessa Bryant proposes a solution for fans' memorabilia.
Since the death of Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna, thousands of fans have made their way to Los Angeles' Staples Center to pay their respects to the late legend by contributing countless items to honor their memories along with the seven other victims of the helicopter crash that took their lives on January 26th.
Now as the Staples Center looks for a sustainable way to manage the items, according to Lee Zeidman, Vanessa Bryant has requested that all the items that fans have left outside of Staples Center be given to her and her family.
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“It will have been a week. We have contractually obligated events that are moving in,” Zeidman tells the L.A. Times. “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.”
As for the perishable items, Zeidman plans to follow the lead of the officials of the Manchester Arena. After the 2017 terrorist attack at an concert, the organization took all flowers and similar items, composted them, and spread them around the city.
“So we’re going to compost all those flowers out there and spread them around the plants in and around L.A. Live and in and around Staples Center,” Zeidman added. “So that means that all those fans that took the time to buy the flowers and plants and brought them down there, some of that will still be around the site.