Hundreds of Kobe Bryant mourners tricked into visiting wrong gravesite
Fans have swarmed a gravesite in a Southern California cemetery in recent days to pay their respects to Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, the latest gesture to honour the NBA legend in the weeks that have followed their death.
There’s just one problem: Those fans are going to the wrong gravesite.
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According to USA Today, flowers and other tributes are being cleared daily from a gravesite at the Pacific View Memorial Park cemetery in Corona Del Mar, California because the site actually belongs to a different family.
Ashley Bunton of Service Corporation International, which owns the cemetery, said they have had to increase security because of the extra visitors, too.
“We can confirm that is not Kobe and Gianna’s resting place,’’ Bunton said.
“We cannot divulge any additional details as to where they are. But we can tell you that is not the correct location.
“[There are] a lot of people coming wandering the cemetery and looking to see if they can locate the burial site. [Security is] just having to monitor things that are going on there.”
‘Shooed people away’
Kobe and Gianna were among nine people killed in a helicopter crash just outside of Los Angeles on January 26.
They were buried in a private ceremony at the cemetery on February 7, which sits near their home in Newport Cost.
The gravesite was identified by the Daily Mail as the Bryants’ on Friday, per the report, which prompted more than 400 people to head to the private plot — which does not have any engravings and coincidentally has purple and gold flowers, Bunton said.
The person at the plot, a security guard told USA Today, was buried there in November.
“Others have actually run into the family members who’ve kind of shooed people away from that spot just because it’s disturbing the peace to the person interred there,” Bunton said.
An official memorial service for the two will be held at the Staples Centre — where thousands flocked to in the days that followed their death to leave flowers, jerseys and more — on Monday.
Ryan Young - Yahoo Sports US
