In a damaging day for Tory Lanez’s defense, jurors heard audio from the blow-by-blow interview that Megan Thee Stallion’s former friend Kelsey Harris gave to prosecutors last September in which she vividly recalled the shooting that left Megan with gunshot wounds to both feet.
The recording was played in a courtroom in downtown Los Angeles Friday after Harris took the witness stand this week and recanted nearly all of her September statements implicating Lanez.
Harris, also known as Kelsey Nicole, was heard on the recording corroborating Megan’s prior testimony that Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, opened fire on the “Sweetest Pie” rapper during a drunken roadside dispute in the predawn hours of July 12, 2020.
Jurors listened with rapt attention to the Sept. 14, 2022 interview, following along with a transcript. In the audio, Harris recalled leaving a pool party at Kylie Jenner’s house in a Cadillac Escalade with Megan, Peterson and a driver identified as Jauquan Smith shortly before the incident.
Harris, 27, told prosecutors a fight broke out inside the SUV and that she stepped in to defend Megan when Peterson started disrespecting her.
“I said, ‘You’re not going to talk to my friend like that,’” Harris recalled on the recording. “Honestly when I argue, I can say things that are hurtful too.”
She said Peterson then told her he was from Canada, “insinuating” Canadians “were gangsters.”
“He said, ‘My n—-, I’ll shoot you,’” Harris told prosecutors. “He said that to me, and he reached like he was going to grab something, reached toward the middle console, but he never pulled anything.” She said Peterson never opened the console.
“I was like, ‘Okay, if you shoot me, I guess it’s my time to go. If you shoot me just know I have people that will ride behind me, my support,’” she responded, according to her interview.
Harris told prosecutors Megan then got of the SUV, returned a short time later, and that the fighting resumed.
“At this point they’re arguing about each other’s artistry. She’s telling him, ‘You’re only this and that because you’re on a remix as Jack Harlow,’” Harris told prosecutors. “They were just hitting each other over their careers.”
Harris said at that point, Peterson ordered Smith to stop the car because he wanted the women out. “This is my car,” he purportedly said, according to Harris.
Smith pulled the vehicle over, and Megan “jumps out of her seat” first, Harris said.
“I get out of my side and no sooner do you know, you start hearing gunshots going off. I looked up maybe about the second or third gunshot. You see Tory, he’s now in the front seat. I guess he must have jumped over in a smooth transition, and he’s leaning over the door, it’s open, and he’s leaning over the door, the front right passenger. He’s shooting over the top of the door,” Harris told prosecutors.
She said during the September interview that Peterson was “leaning over the front passenger door and he was shooting the gun.” She described her own position as being outside the car but still behind her passenger door, in very close proximity to the gunfire.
“(Megan) was walking away when this happened, but by the third or fourth shot, she was facing towards us, and I would describe it as like a deer in headlights (look),” Harris said.
“The way Tory was angling the gun, it wasn’t like straight, it was like, down, definitely in her direction,” she said. Harris told prosecutors she didn’t hear Peterson say anything.
Peterson listened to the recording while seated at the defense table on the fifth day of his felony assault trial.
The “Luv” rapper has pleaded not guilty to three felony charges in the high-profile case: assault with a firearm causing great bodily injury; concealing a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle; and the recently added count of discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
If convicted as charged, the Alone at Prom rapper is facing the possibility of 22 years and eight months in prison and subsequent deportation since he’s a citizen of Canada.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David Herriford ruled late Thursday that he would allow jurors to hear the full recording after he initially excluded it when prosecutors played a small portion Wednesday and Harris started waffling and flip-flopping, saying repeatedly that she couldn’t remember key details anymore or that she had lied during the September sit-down.
Herriford changed his mind and allowed it in because prosecutors said Peterson’s defense lawyer “opened the door” by “impugning” the prosecution’s “integrity” during his fierce cross-examination of Harris, in which he suggested prosecutors misled her into thinking she wouldn’t have to testify at trial if she told them what they “wanted to hear” during the closed-door interview.
Prosecutors are expected to wrap up the case either Friday or Monday.
In his opening statement, defense lawyer George Mgdesyan said he expected the evidence in the case would show Harris was the one who pulled the trigger.