What was claimed
Kobe Bryant’s wife Vanessa has died by suicide.
Our verdict
This is false, and the website making the claim is impersonating BBC News.
Kobe Bryant’s wife Vanessa has not died by suicide
27 February 2020
A number of fake web pages, widely shared on Facebook, wrongly claim that the wife of the late basketball star Kobe Bryant has died by suicide. They originate from a website which falsely impersonates BBC News.
Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna died in a helicopter crash on 26 January. Since then, false articles claiming that his wife Vanessa died by suicide, and recorded herself doing it, have spread online.
Vanessa is still alive. On February 24, she attended a public, televised memorial service for Mr Bryant at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles, and gave a widely reported speech paying tribute to her late husband. She has also been regularly updating her Instagram page.
Although the articles claiming Vanessa died purport to be from BBC News, they are just impersonating the BBC by using its logo. The “suicide videos” are posted on black backgrounds, which is not in the BBC’s style, and have URLs which are clearly not related to the BBC.
One “suicide video” of Vanessa is not a video at all and forwards to another false story purporting to be about Bryant’s eldest daughter Natalia’s death; this contains a video which when clicked on says it is unavailable.
None of the videos or links show any evidence that Vanessa has died, and it has not been reported by any news outlet.
We have also fact-checked the claim that Natalia died by suicide. This is also false.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false as it is not true and the websites falsely claim to be BBC News.