A Los Angeles decide dominated Monday that there’s sufficient proof for A$AP Rocky to face trial on prices that he fired a gun at a former pal and collaborator on the streets close to a Hollywood lodge in 2021.
Superior Court Judge M.L. Villar made the ruling at at a preliminary listening to, after listening to roughly a day and a half of testimony from two witnesses. Rocky, who gave no seen response to the choice, has pleaded not responsible to 2 felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.
The 35-year-old rapper, style mogul and two-time Grammy nominee is in a relationship with Rihanna, with whom he has two younger sons.
He may rise up to 24 years in jail if convicted on all prices, prosecutors mentioned.
Villar mentioned “the totality of the video and testimony” exhibits there may be adequate proof for the defendant to go to trial. She emphasised that preliminary hearings have a a lot decrease proof commonplace than a trial.
“We’re not disappointed, not surprised, we expected to go to trial, we’ve been planning for trial all along,” Rocky’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, mentioned exterior court docket. “Rocky is going to be vindicated when all this is said and done, without question.”
A$AP Rocky’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, questions a witness throughout a preliminary listening to for his consumer’s case over an alleged assault with a semiautomatic firearm.
Allison Dinner/EPA by way of AP, Pool
At the primary day of the listening to, which resumed Monday after a protracted delay, Terell Ephron testified that he and Rocky, a pal since childhood, had belonged to the identical collective of musicians and artists at their New York highschool.
He mentioned their relationship had began to go bitter and resulted within the standoff in Hollywood on Nov. 6, 2021, when he mentioned Rocky first pulled a gun on him, and in a later confrontation fired pictures that grazed Ephron’s knuckles.
“You need nothing more than Mr. Ephron’s testimony by itself,” Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec advised the decide earlier than her ruling, including that the surveillance video that captured components of the incident “corroborates exactly what Mr. Ephron said.”
Tacopina countered that “there are some real problems with the testimony of the complainant,” including, “I think there’s not enough evidence.”
Tacopina established, whereas questioning a police detective earlier Monday, that seven officers who searched a sidewalk and road about 20 minutes after the pictures have been allegedly fired discovered no proof of the capturing, and {that a} pair of 9 mm shell casings in police possession have been recovered by Ephron, who returned to the scene about an hour after the standoff.
Tacopina performed physique digicam video of the officers, who searched the bottom for about 10 minutes. Ephron, who first went to police to report the incident two days later, turned over the shell casings, which the detective mentioned had no recoverable fingerprints on them.
Prosecutors performed a video from close to the scene the place no persons are initially seen, however what feels like two gunshots might be heard. Then a person comes working round a nook, then slows to a stroll. The man’s id will not be clear within the video, however LAPD Detective Frank Flores testified they’ve established it’s Rocky.
Flores testified that no 9 mm pistol was recovered when a search warrant was served on Rocky.
Prosecutors confirmed a nonetheless from surveillance video displaying a person in a hooded sweatshirt whose face will not be seen holding what seems to be a gun, together with one other picture from the identical video displaying the face of the person within the sweatshirt, with no gun seen. Flores testified that the pictures led them to determine it was Rocky.
Tacopina, who can be representing Donald Trump in his New York legal case, pressed the detective on the weapon, suggesting police had no manner of understanding whether or not it was a loaded and even actual gun.
“That gun, or whatever it was, was not tested, right?” Tacopina requested. “No, it was never recovered,” Flores mentioned.
Tacopina requested, “You’re not sure if it’s an operable gun or a non-operable gun or whatever?”
“Without having it, I can’t tell you whether it’s operable,” the detective replied.
Tacopina additionally tried to forged doubt on the minor harm to Ephron’s hand, questioning why he waited till he returned to New York to hunt medical therapy.
He confirmed the detective a photograph of the scraped fingers and mentioned, sarcastically, “It’s a miracle he survived that shooting.”
The decide admonished him, certainly one of a number of occasions she advised Tacopina to alter his tone.
Rocky was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport within the case in April and was charged in August. He arrived within the courtroom Monday morning sporting a darkish go well with, sun shades and a face masks, after spending the weekend on the Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix auto race, the place he had a outstanding position as Puma’s inventive director within the clothes model’s partnership with F1.
He has launched little music lately, and has turn out to be higher often called the romantic companion, fellow style influencer and co-parent of Rihanna, with whom he had a second son in May. His first two studio albums in 2013 and 2015 each went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
Asked exterior court docket whether or not Rocky would ask Rihanna, who didn’t attend the preliminary hearings, to attend his trial, Tacopina responded, “He would never subject his family, he wants to shield them, he’s handling it like Rocky would handle something, he protects his family.”
Rocky additionally turned an unlikely trigger for then-President Donald Trump, who mentioned he was making an attempt to get the rapper freed and returned to the U.S. when he was jailed after a brawl in Sweden in 2019. He was discovered responsible of assault at trial however was given a “conditional sentence” that meant no further jail time.
