Rapper Tory Lanez is accused of shooting five times at Megan Thee Stallion during an altercation in the Hollywood Hills on Monday. Megan Thee Stallion’s defence attorney stated that the jury will have to decide who fired the gun nearly two and a half years ago. A prosecutor told jurors that Tory Lanez told Megan Thee Stallion to “dance” before the alleged shooting. The trial has finally begun with a series of details being revealed from both sides.
In addition to accusations that he personally used a handgun and seriously injured someone, Lanez, whose real name is Daystar Peterson, is accused with assault with a semiautomatic firearm, discharging a firearm carelessly, and carrying a loaded, unlicensed firearm in a vehicle.
According to the deputy district attorney, Lanez and the rapper’s female acquaintance, who was present when the incident happened and was nearby, both tested positive for gunshot residue.
Lanez “profusely apologised for his acts” and said he was “simply too inebriated” in a subsequent phone call, according to Bott’s testimony to the jury.
Megan Thee Stallion would testify before the jury on Tuesday, the prosecution said.
George Mgdesyan, Lanez’s attorney, urged the jury to be impartial and said the panel would need to determine whether his client’s accuser is “being truthful.”
A neighbour claimed to have seen the two ladies fighting after the SUV came to a stop on Nichols Canyon Road, and the defence attorney claimed it was a “case about envy,” telling jurors that the two women had argued inside the SUV.
Who came out of the car, who was fighting, and who discharged the gun will be the most crucial questions for jurors to answer, according to Mgdesyan.
The defence will introduce evidence during its portion of the trial, according to Lanez’s lawyer, who said that it is his responsibility to demonstrate that “she is lying.”
Lanez, 30, entered the courtroom holding hands with his young son and is currently free on a $350,000 bond. In the week before his trial, the rapper was released from house arrest and electronic monitoring thanks to Superior Court Judge David Herriford.
Det. Ryan Stogner of the Los Angeles Police Department testified at a hearing where Lanez was ordered to stand trial last year that only Megan Thee Stallion heard the alleged comment, “Dance, bitch.”
According to the investigator, she originally claimed to have not been shot and that broken glass was to blame for the injuries to her feet.
Following the incident, Megan Thee Stallion said in a video uploaded on Instagram Live, “Tory shot me. You killed me, hired a publicist, and your staff is lying, Quit lying.
She stated that she was taken to the hospital by police officers, had surgery there, and was “very grateful to be alive.”
She claimed that she was “recently the victim of an act of violence by a guy” in a New York Times op-ed and that she first kept quiet about what had happened “out of concern for myself and my friends.”
Even as a victim, she claimed, “I have encountered suspicion and judgement.” “My anxieties about talking about what happened were, regrettably, justified given the way people have publicly questioned and argued whether I played a role in my own brutal assault,” the author said.
A large portion of the rapper’s fame came from freestyle videos that were extensively circulated on Instagram. Her controversial duet with Cardi B on “WAP” brought her further recognition, while her single “Savage” went viral on TikTok and peaked the Billboard Hot 100 chart in May 2020.
As the first woman to have three No. 1 streaming singles in a single year, Megan Thee Stallion had made history in 2020. Currently Megan has 24.8M monthly listeners.
