tory-lanez-trial – Photo credit: Ysa Pérez for Rolling Stone
Tory Lanez was handcuffed and taken into custody in a Los Angeles courtroom on Tuesday after a judge found he had violated protection orders in his assault case, which claimed he had Megan Thee Stallion before almost two shot in the feet years ago.
Judge David Herriford revoked Lanez’s previous $250,000 bail and increased it to $350,000 after nearly an hour of hearing arguments and finding that Lanez had violated court orders prohibiting him from contacting Megan or to harass or discuss findings in the case with outsiders.
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The “Say It” rapper had a serf with him for the morning hearing and spent around five hours in custody. As soon as he was treated and released, he climbed behind the wheel of a waiting Lamborghini and told Rolling Stone he felt “amazing” before driving off.
Lanez, real name Daystar Peterson, has pleaded not guilty to the high-profile July 2020 case. He appeared in court in a black tuxedo jacket over a black turtleneck and was accompanied by his father and several friends.
His attorney, Shawn Holley, argued Lanez did not provide any findings in the case to a Twitter user and third-party YouTube personality known as DJ Akademiks before Akademiks tweeted on February 23 that “Tory Lanez DNA not on the gun Meg was found in your stallion case.”
“What he said is wrong,” Holley said in court Tuesday, referring to the now-deleted tweet that sparked a social media firestorm. “What[DJ Akademiks]said is that the DNA was not found on the gun. And indeed, the swab of the gun “inconclusively” shows there were four contributors.”
Holley also referred to a Follow-up tweet from February 23rd by DJ Akademiks, which read: “I’ve seen this document myself…it says literally that finding Tory DNA on the gun or the magazine was inconclusive.” Holley argued that this was also incorrect because “the Magazine smear indicating Mr. Peterson was disfellowshipped”.
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“If he had seen that document, he probably would have understood it correctly,” she argued, calling the tweets “babble” in “a medium that is inherently almost unreliable.”
“The court cannot conclude that the defendant distributed anything, but it appears that he violated the order prohibiting him from making discovery testimony,” Judge Herriford said, referring to follow-up posts by Peterson , including one that read, “Ak doesn’t lie.”
Holley argued that Megan has also used her considerable social media presence to speak out about the case and some of her comments have been “damaging” to Peterson. But Assistant District Attorney Kathy Ta argued Peterson’s alleged endorsement of DJ Akademiks’ DNA tweets was “his way of moving forward and manipulating the narrative.” She said Megan “received death threats” and was “constantly harassed” because of Peterson’s “behaviour.”
Judge Herriford placed Peterson in the sheriff’s custody with the higher bail after saying the prosecution’s request for the musician to be held without bail was “extreme”. The judge added a new “crystal clear” release condition, stating that Peterson “must not mention the plaintiff witness on any social media in this case.”
“Prosecutors did not ask for bail, or alternatively asked for $5 million bail, and the court dismissed those arguments and increased bail to $350,000. And that bail is now being posted,” Holley said after the hearing.
“I’m here because this is my son. I’m the first person outside of those present that day to hear about it. i believe in him I believe in his innocence,” Peterson’s father, Sonstar Peterson, told Rolling Stone.
The high-profile case is now nearing a preliminary trial on September 14 after a previous judge ruled at a preliminary hearing in December that prosecutors had enough evidence to warrant convening a jury.
At the December hearing, an LAPD detective testified that Peterson allegedly fired a 9mm semi-automatic pistol at the ground near Megan’s feet and the “Savage” singer during an argument following their departure from a pool party in Kylie violated Jenner’s house.
Detective Ryan Stogner said he was assigned to the case two days after the shooting and questioned Megan by phone on July 16, 2020 and then again on November 12, 2020. Peterson pulls the trigger.
“As she got out of the vehicle, she heard Mr. Peterson yelling obscenities at her, and he said, ‘Dance, bitch!’ And then he started firing a gun at her,” Stogner testified.
“[Megan]watched Mr. Peterson hold a gun, and then she watched him start shooting,” Stogner said. “Megan immediately felt pain in her feet, saw blood, fell to the ground and then crawled to an adjacent driveway of an apartment building… She described her injuries as bleeding profusely.”
Holley then interrogated Stogner’s defense, grilling him about his interviews with Pete and extracting from him that the “Hot Girl Summer” rapper was involved in an argument with her friend and former assistant Kelsey Harris, who was another passenger in the black Cadillac Escalade just before the shooting.
Holley suggested that Harris “had a romantic interest in Tory” and became jealous when Peterson allegedly claimed during the car ride home that he and Pete were in “an intimate relationship”.
Holley went on to say that Harris may have been in possession of the gun when it was fired because investigators found gunshot residue on her hand. The attorney also said a man who witnessed the shooting from a nearby home said he believed the muzzle flash was closest to the non-victim woman at the time of the shooting.
Upon further questioning by Ta last December, Stogner said gunshot residue can be transferred to someone “in the vicinity” of a fired gun. Stogner also questioned the credibility of the testimonies, saying the man reported seeing two men and a woman physically beating Pete.
“He thought they were trying to kill her. He said it looked like a severe caning for him,” Stogner testified. “He had mentioned that it was the two men who hit the woman on the ground.”
Peterson was arrested after the shooting by officers responding to a “shots fired” call near the 1800 block of Nichols Canyon Road. He was charged with suspected possession of a concealed firearm in a vehicle and was released hours later after posting his initial $35,000 bail.
Pete didn’t publicly identify Peterson as her alleged attacker for weeks, but eventually named him in an Instagram post more than a month later.
“Tory shot me. You shot me and got your publicist and people to go to these blogs, lie and stuff,” she said in the video, which was posted on Aug. 20, 2020. “Stop lying. Why lie? I do not understand. I’ve tried to keep the situation off the internet, but you’re dragging it out.”
She said: “Even though he shot me, I tried to spare him. And you motherfuckers don’t spare me. That’s crazy.”
Immediately after the shooting, Pete was vague about what had happened. Stogner testified that she initially told responding officers that she cut her feet on glass. She did so because she was concerned about how police might react if she knew Peterson, a black man, had a firearm in the car, she allegedly told Stogner.
“She said she was extremely scared and embarrassed at the time and due to the fact that she was friends with the defendant she was afraid he would get in trouble and she also expressed some concerns about the political climate regarding police and shootings,” Stogner testified. “She was concerned that there had been recent police shootings and she described her concern that the police might fire at the suspect as he had just committed a shooting.”
Peterson, 29, was formally charged on Oct. 8, 2020 with one count of assaulting the Houston-bred actor with a semi-automatic firearm in a manner that “personally caused great bodily harm” and one count of carrying a concealed, loaded, and unregistered firearm in a vehicle.
His next court date is scheduled for June 9th.
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