A man who alleges A$AP Rocky fired a handgun at him in 2021 said Thursday that his story may have changed over the past three years, but his fading memory doesn’t change what fundamentally happened.
“A gun was pulled on me. It was pointed at me, and it was fired later,” the man, who goes by A$AP Relli, said at the Los Angeles trial of Rocky, his former friend. “It’s been three years. If he was innocent he would be home a long time ago.”
Rihanna, the superstar singer and Rocky’s partner, watched from the audience for the second straight day.
After the jury left for the day, Superior Court Mark Arnold said that he hadn’t heard the latter part of the statement, and would tell them to disregard it when they returned for the rest of the cross-examination Friday.
Relli, whose legal name is Terell Ephron, testified that when the confrontation began on a Hollywood street, Rocky pointed a gun at his stomach and head, but it wasn’t actually touching him, and that Rocky said he was going to kill him. Rocky’s lawyer Joe Tacopina confronted him with a prosecutor’s interview in 2022 when he said the gun was pressed into his stomach, and he hadn’t remembered what Rocky said.
Relli broke courtroom decorum to shout at Rocky, “You did this to yourself” earlier in the day. The judge admonished him. Relli responded, “He was staring at me!”
Rocky, whose legal name is Rakim Athelaston Mayers, sat at the defense table in a black suit and did not audibly respond. He is charged with two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic handgun for allegedly firing at Relli, his friend since high school. The charges, with a conviction, could lead to up to 25 years in prison.
Rihanna, who has two toddler sons with Rocky, caused a stir with her first appearance at his trial Wednesday. She returned to the same spot in Rocky’s section on Thursday, sitting between his mother and sister. Surreptitiously, she entered the courtroom before most of the audience. She wore a white top and gold earrings, and calmly followed the proceedings.
Tacopina’s questioning broached the initial confrontation between Rocky and Relli, but when the trial ended for the day, had still not reached the actual moment when the shots were allegedly fired.
He spent much of it examining Relli’s attitude toward Rocky leading up to the shooting. Relli was frequently frustrated and evasive, demanding to know why he was being asked certain questions and answering, “I don’t recall” before others were even finished.
He denied that he had been upset with the Rocky before the alleged shooting, as the defense confronted him with text messages and previous testimony that suggested otherwise.
“You trying to make me look like I got some kind of animosity toward this dude, I don’t,” he said. “I never did. To this day, I don’t.”
Tacopina showed Relli text messages from about two months before the incident, when he swore at Rocky and called him “fake-ass,” after Rocky had allegedly failed to support one of his projects.
In another text message from a few weeks before the confrontation, Relli said he was going to beat Rocky up if he didn’t pay for a deceased mutual friend’s body to be returned to New York as promised. Relli said he learned later that Rocky had in fact paid.
And Tacopina showed texts from just before the Nov. 6, 2021, incident, when Relli texted Rocky: “you got all these fake animosity towards me lol beat me up” and “I wish you would.”
Relli responded from the stand, “That doesn’t mean ‘bring a gun.’”
He said he didn’t know why he had deleted that text exchange from his phone before handing it over to police.
He testified under prosecution questioning earlier that Rocky had pulled a gun on him and fired it, grazing his hand. Rocky’s lawyers say the shots he fired were from a starter pistol that shoots only blanks that he carries as a prop.
Rocky and Rihanna, both 36, have two sons together: 2-year-old RZA Athelston Mayers and 1-year-old Riot Rose Mayers.
The singer and the rapper, who are both fashion moguls, first became close when he provided a verse when the collaborated on one of her songs in 2012, and became a couple in 2020.
Raised in Harlem, Rocky’s rap songs became a phenomenon on the streets of New York in 2011. He had his mainstream breakthrough when his first studio album went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2013.
He’s set to have his biggest career year as a multimedia star. This Sunday, he’s nominated for a Grammy Award at the ceremony at Crypto.com Arena just two miles from his trial.
He’s also set to act opposite Denzel Washington in a film directed by Spike Lee, and to co-chair the Met Gala in May.
A$AP Rocky’s accuser testified at his trial that changes in his story and his memory in the three years since don’t change the fact that the hip-hop star pulled a gun on him and fired it on a Hollywood street in 2021.
LOS ANGELES – The man who alleges rapper A$AP Rocky fired a handgun at him in 2021 balked and bristled under cross-examination Wednesday and at one point shouted at the defendant, whose partner Rihanna watched in the audience.
The defense questioning of A$AP Relli, the trial’s most important witness, got off to a stumbling start as he repeatedly demanded to know why defense attorney Joe Tacopina was asking certain questions, so much so that the judge called a recess so the prosecution and his own lawyer could explain to Relli how to answer properly in court.
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Before that could happen, Relli shouted, “You did this to yourself!” to Rocky.
“Do not talk to the defendant!”
Judge Mark Arnold shouted at him.
“He’s staring at me!” Relli said.
Rocky, whose legal name is Rakim Athelston Mayers, is on trial on two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm for allegedly firing on Relli, born Terell Ephron. The charges, with a conviction, could lead to up to 25 years in prison. Rocky sat at the defense table wearing a black suit and watching the witness intently. He did not audibly respond to Relli’s shout.
Rihanna, the singing superstar who is his longtime partner and the mother of their two toddler sons, caused a stir with her first appearance at his trial Wednesday, and was back sitting between Rocky’s mother and sister on Thursday. She was again brought into the courtroom surreptitiously before most of the rest of the audience. She wore a white top and gold earrings, and calmly followed the proceedings.
Relli grew frustrated by the questions asked by Tacopina, Rocky’s attorney. The defense showed screenshots of Relli’s Instagram posts in an attempt to contradict his earlier testimony that he had nothing but love for Rocky before the shooting, but that he’d been so shunned for coming forward that his business was ruined and that he had no social media presence.
“Why are you showing my Instagram? I’m already getting death threats,” Relli said to Tacopina.
“Who is giving you death threats?” Tacopina asked.
“The whole world!” Relli responded.
“The whole world gave you death threats?” Tacopina asked.
“Yeah, cause you’re saying I’m an extortionist and you’re putting my whole life out there,” Relli said.
Relli is suing Tacopina for libel in civil court for his public statements, and suing Rocky over the incident. The defense is using the lawsuits to cast him as someone just seeking money from a false story.
The testimony had barely even addressed the incident itself when the trial broke for lunch.
While testifying a day earlier, Relli described the night in November of 2021 when he and Rocky, their relationship straining, had a confrontation and scuffled on a Hollywood street, and Rocky pointed a gun at him before walking away.
He testified that he was shouting at Rocky as he walked after him, then Rocky pulled the gun again and held it in the air.
“He turned around and then it was like BOOM!” he told the jury.
He said he felt like his hand was burning where a bullet grazed it.
“I felt my hand hot,” Relli continued, saying later, “I was hit. Or I was grazed. I didn’t have a hole or nothing.”
Rocky’s lawyer says the shots he fired were not even from a real gun — they were blanks from a starter pistol that he carried as a prop. The lawyer said Relli knew this, and that was why he was so fearless walking after him.
“Oh it was a real gun,” Relli testified.
About an hour after the shooting, Relli returned to the scene and said he photographed and recovered two shell casings. Earlier, while responding to a report of a shooting, police did not find any.
Rocky and Rihanna, both 36, have two sons together: 2-year-old RZA Athelston Mayers and 1-year-old Riot Rose Mayers. Rihanna revealed she was pregnant with the younger boy after headlining the Super Bowl halftime show in 2023 with a visible baby bump.
The singer and the rapper, who are both fashion moguls, first became close when he provided a verse to her 2012 song “Cockiness (Love It)” and they performed it at the MTV Video Music Awards. They became a couple in 2020.
Raised in Harlem, Rocky’s rap songs became a phenomenon on the streets of New York in 2011. He had his mainstream breakthrough when his first studio album went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2013.
He’s set to have his biggest career year as a multi-media star. This Sunday, he’s nominated for a Grammy Award at the ceremony at Crypto.com Arena just two miles from his trial.
He’s also set to star opposite Denzel Washington in a film directed by Spike Lee, and to co-chair the Met Gala in May.