Shotgun Wedding! Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen Bodyguard Shot at Paparazzi, Says Suit
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) They are one of America's best looking and most talked about couples — New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and supermodel Gisele Bundchen.
The two certainly attract enough attention, but now two photographers who covered the pair's Costa Rican wedding have sued the newlyweds for $1 million, saying that the supermodel's bodyguards shot at them during a post-nuptial party.
Talk about a shotgun wedding!
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan alleges that the photographers, though they weren't hit, suffered physical and mental harm from the attack in early April at Bundchen's holiday home.
The suit claims Brady and Bundchen hired poorly trained security guards even though they should have known their party, held two months after the wedding, was a press magnet.
AFP photographer Yuri Cortez and photographer Rolando Aviles of the Costa Rican national daily Al Dia say Bundchen's bodyguards narrowly missed their heads when the guards shot at their car after they refused to give up their cameras and memory cards. The pair claims they "discreetly photographed" the party from a neighbor's property. The neighbor, they say, had given them permission to do so.
The photographers claim they were returning to their rented car when a bodyguard approached them "in a menacing and threatening manner," demanding Cortez's camera and memory cards. Aviles ran off. Cortez tried to run but was grabbed by the bodyguard and immobilized with his arm behind his back, the lawsuit said.
Cortez was told that members of the Bundchen-Brady family wanted to talk to him, according to the suit. He picked up Aviles and drove to Bundchen's residence, where more men again demanded his memory cards and one bodyguard tried to enter his car to remove cameras.
The photographers, both residents of Costa Rica, tried to drive away when they spotted a drawn gun in the hands of one bodyguard, the lawsuit said.
The bodyguard fired the gun, shattering the rear window of the sports utility vehicle with a bullet that then hit the front windshield and ricocheted off it into the driver's seat, the lawsuit said.
"The bullet narrowly missed striking the heads of Cortez and Aviles," the suit claims.
No one was struck by the bullets, but Cortez and Aviles are claiming physical injuries and mental anguish.
Both photographers say they are not paparazzi.
Don Yee, Brady's agent and attorney, declined comment, saying he had not yet seen the court papers. Bundchen publicist Alison Levy said she does not comment on her client's personal life.