Local linked to Kobe case
By KRISTEN ENEVOLD AND IAN WILSON, CALGARY SUN
A night of partying at a local bar has placed a Calgary man in the middle of the Kobe Bryant rape case. Wes Dawson, 22, spent an evening dancing and flirting with a blonde stranger only to later discover she was the mysterious young woman who'd earlier accused Kobe Bryant of raping her.
And now pictures of him kissing and grinding with the woman are on the front page of a popular supermarket magazine.
"It's kind of weird," said Wes Dawson about having his mug splashed over a two-page spread with the headline 'Kobe Accuser Parties.'
Over the August long weekend, Dawson was with friends at Outlaws Niteclub when a woman he never met asked if her friends could take a picture of them. Those photos -- taken after the alleged rape -- shows Bryant's accuser dancing, kissing and being licked by Dawson -- and landed Dawson on the front of the Globe.
"She was the only girl in the bar acting that way -- you usually don't have girls going up to you like that," said Dawson, who maintains the young woman was the instigator of the encounter.
Shortly after, Bryant's lawyers showed up at his doorstep -- and they've been in regular contact with him ever since.
"They asked for a statement and now they want me to go down to Colorado to testify at the trial -- I'm still thinking about it," he said.
"Nothing like this has happened to me before -- I was just sitting in the corner of the bar, near the back and she sat in my lap and her friends took pictures," he said.
Dawson also noticed the woman dancing around tables that night, and by the end of the evening she wanted to leave with him, he said.
"I just went home, but she wanted to do something afterwards, a party or something," said Dawson.
He hasn't seen Bryant's accuser since that night and doesn't want to. "No, I don't want to talk to her again," he said.
Bryant's defence team also has pictures of her trip to Outlaws, which could be used to counter arguments by the prosecution that the accused was traumatized by her encounter with Bryant.
The photos surfaced after an exclusive Calgary Sun story on Aug. 15., confirming a tip a high-profile private eye, working for Bryant's defence team, was in the city digging up information on Bryant's accuser.
Her trip to Calgary was also recently chronicled in the book Kobe Bryant: The Game of His Life, by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro.
Meanwhile, in court in Eagle, Colo., this week, the judge presiding over the case issued a ruling that would give Bryant's lawyers wide latitude to question his accuser about her sexual history.
Prosecutors called the defence's desire to widely question her sex life a "fishing expedition" and said they will ask the Colorado Supreme Court to strike down the ruling.
Colorado's rape shield law bars evidence being introduced at trial about the sexual history of a victim, unless there is a compelling reason to admit the testimony.