The American artist's lawyer assures that the gun with which his client allegedly threatened another rapper was a film prop.
American rapper A$AP Rocky only had a fake gun when he threatened a former friend, who accuses him of having shot him in 2021, his defense assured on Friday January 24.
Born Rakim Mayers, the 36-year-old artist, who has two children with singer Rihanna, is on trial in a Los Angeles court for assault with a semi-automatic weapon on Terell Ephron, one of his former friends with whom he founded the hip-hop collective that inspired his stage name.
Terell Ephron, aka A$AP Relli, accuses the star of shooting him several times during a nighttime altercation in the streets of Hollywood in November 2021, slightly injuring him in the hand.
“Nothing but a blank pistol”
The two former friends had fallen out because some members of the collective felt that A$AP Rocky had become arrogant and ungrateful since his rise to fame.
Terell Ephron's resentment “is the catalyst for this incident,” argued A$AP Rocky's lawyer, Joe Tacopina. “It was Relli who was looking for a fight,” he added, estimating that video surveillance images show him making the first physical contact.
The lawyer also assured that the weapon with which A$AP Rocky allegedly threatened his ex-companion was a simple film prop, used in “music videos” or to fire blanks at the start of a race.
-“The evidence will clearly show that the object (was) absolutely nothing other than a blank pistol (…), a dummy pistol,” he insisted.
“An extortion attempt”
According to the lawyer, seven police officers searched the scene of the altercation a few hours later, without finding either shell casings or weapons. But Terell Ephron returned to the scene after they left, and said he discovered a pair of 9mm cartridge cases. Evidence that he himself fabricated, according to the lawyer.
“This is nothing but (…) a clearly intentional extortion attempt on the part of Relli (to finance an) extravagant lifestyle,” insisted the lawyer.
The trial is scheduled to continue Tuesday, January 28. A$AP Rocky, who appears free, refused a plea deal with the prosecution that would have sent him six months behind bars.
After two albums – Long. Live. A$AP et At. Long. Last. A$AP – which catapulted him to stardom during the first half of the 2010 decade, the rapper has produced little music in recent years.
In 2019, he was given a suspended prison sentence in Sweden after a fight. An affair which caused diplomatic tensions between Stockholm and Washington, pushing Donald Trump, then President of the United States, to intervene.
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