A week afterBob Saget’s family was granted a permanent injunction to block the release of certain documents tied to the actor’s death,57 photos and redacted body camera footagefrom police were made public on Tuesday.
The Florida authorities' release of the materials came after Circuit Judge Vincent Chiu, on March 14, ordered the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and District Nine Medical Examiner’s Office not to release a limited cache of records collected during the investigation into Saget’s Jan. 9 death. Saget was found dead at age 65 in a Ritz-Carlton hotel room in Orlando, Florida.
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In addition, the judge also permitted the release of the first 40 seconds of police body camera footage videos — segments which depicted Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes hotel and Saget’s room without personal effects.
Photos and audio recordings inside Saget’s hotel room, which showed his body or private items, will remain permanently confidential. Spokespersons for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and Judge Chiu’s office did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.
Bob Saget.FOX via Getty
Saget was found dead on Jan. 9, just one day after he performed a stand-up set in Jacksonville. An autopsy performed on Jan. 10 confirmed that Saget’sdeath was “the result of blunt head trauma,” and themanner of his death was an accident, not tied to any illicit drugs or toxins. TheFull Houseactor had severe fractures to the back of his head and around his eyes when he died.
Amid the growing questions around his death, Saget’s widow Kelly Rizzo and Saget’s three daughtersfiled a lawsuitagainst Orange County Sheriff John Mina and the District Nine Medical Examiner’s Office on Feb. 15, in an effort to block the release of records pertaining to the death investigation.
Bob Saget with Kelly Rizzo, Aubrey Saget and Lara Saget.Leon Bennett/WireImage
Though Judge Chiu ruled in favor of the Saget family’s request to keep certain records private, he also pointed out that there was “a legitimate public interest in government accountability” in the investigation and what was found.
“This Court finds that as a matter of law that there exists a lesser public interest in the disclosure of the Protected Records than the privacy and statutory rights of [the Saget family]. There is a legitimate public interest in government accountability in the performance of the Sheriff’s Office and the Medical Examiner,” the judge stated. “However, in this case, there is no ongoing criminal investigation. The [authorities] have conducted thorough investigations, and there are no allegations of incompetence or misconduct in their respective roles.”
Last week, PEOPLE obtained an incident report from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, which found thatthere was no conclusive reasoning for Saget’s fatal injury. The incident report also explained that a re-examination of Saget’s room at the Ritz-Carlton was conducted “to locate specific places or items in the room that could have caused the trauma found on autopsy,” but officials were unable to find any such item.
source: people.com
