Listen to this article here
|
Natalia Bryant, a 19-year-old University of Southern California student and daughter of the late basketball icon Kobe, filed for a restraining order on Monday against a man nearly twice her age.
Bryant filed the civil harassment restraining order against 32-year-old Dwayne Cortez Toliver Kemp, a man from Sun Valley, California, according to court filings.
According to the restraining order, Kemp allegedly began harassing Bryant on social media in 2020, when she was 17 and he was 30.
Described as an “online gun enthusiast,” Kemp began messaging Bryant as if they were dating or planning to date. While the kissing faces and heart emojis he’d send were frightening enough, Bryant was more worried about Kemp’s threats to make unwanted in-person contact with her, the filing shows.
At one point, Kemp allegedly shared with Bryant a fantasy about having a child named after Natalia’s late father, famous for creating the #mambamentality.
“Thankful For Him Birthing You, Hopefully We Can Birth Him… ‘Kobe,’” he wrote, the filing said.
Natalia Bryant gets restraining order against alleged stalker
As time went on, Kemp allegedly escalated his behavior by searching for her twice on the University of Southern California campus, most recently on Nov. 2.
Natalia Bryant claims multiple people witnessed the dangerous behavior from the alleged stalker, including USC faculty, USC Department of Public Safety and her sorority members.
Despite the alleged witnesses, Bryant moved in fear alone as Kemp’s social media posts continued to depict guns and illegal modifications he planned to make to them. By Nov. 9, he posted images of himself purchasing a rifle in a series of posts to Facebook and Instagram. Those posts occurred around the time he again tried to contact Bryant, the filing shows.
With his actions causing Bryant “substantial emotional distress,” the USC campus police and Los Angeles Police Department granted her restraining order. Under the order, Kemp must remain at least 200 yards away from Bryant’s home, her workplace, her school, her vehicle and sorority house and the USC campus.
Kemp has previously been arrested several times on misdemeanor charges, with at least one involving a firearm, according to the filing.
The next hearing date regarding the restraining order is Dec. 14.