#Socialites, get a load of this! A statement from Tory Lanez’s driver in the 2020 Megan Thee Stallion shooting case, also involving her former best friend Kelsey Harris, is going viral as Lanez’s latest appeal attempt gets blocked by the California Attorney General’s Office.
In the statement — which was released shortly before Lanez’s habeas petition in December 2023 — the Toronto rapper, born Daystar Peterson, is said to have wrestled the gun away from Kelsey Harris when it went off and resulted in the Houston rapper, born Megan Pete, getting shot in her feet.
Tory Lanez’s driver, Jauquan Smith, is a witness to the 2020 shooting of Megan Thee Stallion. However, according to legal reporter Meghann Cunniff, Lanez’s legal team never called him to the stand as a witness during their 2022 trial — reportedly telling the judge that his testimony wasn’t needed.
Additionally, in his statement, Smith reportedly claimed that it was the prosecution that never allowed him to testify during the trial. Recalling the 2020 incident, Tory Lanez’s driver said during an altercation between the two women, he saw Megan Thee Stallion’s former best friend Kelsey Harris holding a gun, at which point he says Lanez’s attempted to wrestle it away from her. However, during the struggle to allegedly disarm Harris, the gun went off and resulted in the Houston Hottie getting shot.
According to Cunniff, Tory Lanez’s appellate lawyers filed for a petition in December, claiming “it was unknown until this time what Smith had witnessed and what he would have stated.” After Lanez’s attempt to get the statement introduced as new evidence, worthy of an appeal, prosecutors pulled transcripts showing Lanez’s trial lawyer, George Mgdesyan, telling the court that Smith’s testimony wasn’t needed.
Since pulling the previously undisclosed statements from Lanez’s trial lawyer, the California Attorney General’s Office now states that Lanez and his legal team knew how his driver would testify and still chose not to call him to the stand — therefore, the statement doesn’t qualify as new evidence.
Tory Lanez will continue his fight for an appeal after being convicted in December 2022 and sentenced to 10 years in August 2023. He was found guilty of three felonies: assault with a semiautomatic firearm; having a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle; and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
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