Megan Thee Stallion is finally ready to talk about Tory Lanez allegedly shooting her in 2020.
The Grammy-winning rapper, 27, sat down with CBS’ Gayle King for her first TV interview about the incident. In the interview, which aired Monday on “CBS Mornings,” Megan Thee Stallion (real name: Megan Pete) shared a tearful recollection of what happened.
Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, was charged in 2020 with shooting Megan Thee Stallion at the feet outside of a party in Hollywood Hills that July. The felony assault case is ongoing, and he was briefly jailed earlier this month after a judge said he had violated a protective order.
The incident began as an “argument because I was ready to go and everybody else wasn’t ready to go,” Megan Thee Stallion told King. “But that’s like normal friend stuff. We fuss about silly stuff all the time.”
Speaking through tears, she said: “But I never put my hands on anybody, I never raised my voice too loud. Like, this was one of them times where it was like – it shouldn’t have got this crazy.”
Previous story:Tory Lanez handcuffed in court for violating protective order in Megan Thee Stallion assault case
The rapper said she got out of the car and “everything (happened) so fast”: She suddenly heard a man screaming “dance,” followed by an expletive directed toward her.
“And then I started shooting. And I’m just like, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” she recalled. “He shot a couple of times. I was so scared. … I didn’t even want to move. I didn’t want to move too quickly. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, if I take a wrong step , I don’t know if he can shoot something that’s super-important. ”
King asked Megan Thee Stallion if she was “afraid for your life at that time.”
“I was really scared, because I had never been shot at before,” she replied, choking up.
Megan Thee Stallion said Lanez offered her money in exchange for her silence in the aftermath. But police had already arrived on the scene – “so many of them,” including helicopters, and the rapper’s first thought was “we’re about to die.”
“The george floyd incident had just happened and police are very much ‘shoot first, ask questions after,'” she said. “I’ve been shot and they’re about to kill somebody. Something bad is about to happen.”
When the police arrived on the scene, all passengers were ordered to step out of the car. Footage first obtained by TMZ shows Megan Thee Stallion backing away with her hands up, limping as her foot de ella bled.
“I don’t remember everything (the police) said to me, but I remember them asking ‘what happened to you?’ And I didn’t want them to kill any of us or shoot any of us, so I just said I stepped on glass.”
That comment has since been used by those siding with Lanez as proof her story doesn’t add up.
“For some reason, I was just trying to protect all of us,” she said. “I didn’t want (the police) to kill us. Even though this person just did this to me, my first reaction still was to try to save us. I didn’t want to see anybody die, so I said I just stepped on glass. So when I see people try to use that against me, to say I was lying… I was lying to protect all of us. Sometimes I wish I would have never said that.”
Related:Megan Thee Stallion writes op-ed on protecting Black women ahead of Tory Lanez court hearing
Following months of speculation and publicity surrounding the incident, Lanez was charged in October 2020. At first, Los Angeles police reported the incident only as shots fired, a woman with foot injuries, and a man arrested on a weapons allegation.
But Megan Thee Stallion revealed a few days later that her foot injuries came from gunshots, and more than a month after the incident, she said in an Instagram video that it was Lanez who fired them. She slowly revealed more via social media in subsequent weeks.
“The way people have publicly questioned and debated whether I played a role in my own violent assault proves that my fears about discussing what happened were, unfortunately, warranted,” she wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times.
The day after he was charged, Lanez tweeted “the truth will come to the light” and “a charge is not a conviction.”
Lanez will next be in court for a June hearing before the scheduled September trial. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of roughly 23 years.
Contributing: Edward Segarra, USA TODAY; Associated Press
