LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man who alleges A$AP Rocky fired a handgun at him in 2021 returned to the courthouse Friday for more cross-examination after a difficult day on the stand.
The defense continued challenging the man, known as A$AP Relli, on the alleged shooting on a Hollywood street in 2021.
At the end of his testimony Thursday, he said 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, Rocky's partner and the mother of their two sons, was in court Friday for the third straight day. She slipped in quietly about 30 minutes into Relli's testimony resuming and sat next to Rocky’s mother. On the first two days she had been escorted into court discretely before the rest of the audience.
Relli, whose legal name is Terell Ephron, testified that 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, 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.
Tacopina spent much of Thursday 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.”
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 in 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.
Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press
