After the shooting of two Los Angeles police officers, who were ambushed while sitting in their car last week, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva issued a challenge to Los Angeles Lakers basketball player LeBron James Monday to match the reward money for the capture of the shooter, according to CNN.
The Los Angeles County deputies were shot several times in the head and face in Compton by an unknown gunman near the MLK Transit Center on Sept.12. Both of the deputies survived the attack and are currently in the hospital in critical but stable condition, according to Villanueva.
The county has pledged $100,000 in reward money to anyone who has any information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of the unknown shooter. Two private donors have also offered an additional $75,000 to the reward money.
Villanueva challenged James to match the reward money during an appearance on the radio show 790KABC on Monday.
“This challenge is to LeBron James,” Villanueva told 790KABC. “I want you to match that and double that reward. Because I know you care about law enforcement. You expressed a very, very interesting statement about your perspective on race relations and on officer-involved shootings and the impact it has on the African American community, and I appreciate that. But likewise, we need to appreciate the respect for life goes across professions, across races, creeds. And I’d like to see LeBron James step up to the plate and double that.”
According to the New York Daily News, Vanessa Bryant, wife of deceased Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant, took issue with Villanueva’s plea. She took to her Instagram page to state her displeasure.
In a post, Bryant incorporated screenshots of a tweet from a Twitter user named @ElanMaree that stated, “How can he talk about trusting the system? His sheriff’s dept. couldn’t be trusted to secure Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crash scene, his deputies took and shared graphic photos of crash victims.”
“He shouldn’t be challenging LeBron James to match a reward or to ‘step up to the plate.’ He couldn’t even ‘step up to the plate’ and hold his deputies accountable for photographing dead children,” read a second tweet that Bryant also reposted to Instagram.