LOS ANGELES — During the first day of A$AP Rocky’s trial, jurors were presented with surveillance videos that a prosecutor claimed clearly showed the rapper firing a gun in 2021 at his former friend. The defense, however, portrayed the friend as a jealous rival seeking money who fabricated much of the story.
Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec delivered a somber and direct presentation during the opening statements of the trial of the multi-talented hip-hop artist. The prosecution heavily relied on video evidence and audio from a 911 call to support their case.
“What will become almost instantly clear is that this is not a complicated case,” Przelomiec said.
In his defense opening statement, Rocky’s attorney Joe Tacopina argued that the video evidence presented was insufficient without the testimony of the accuser, Terell Ephron, also known as A$AP Relli. Tacopina contended that Relli’s motives stem from “jealousy, falsehoods, and avarice.”
“This case rises or falls on his credibility,” Tacopina said, repeatedly calling Relli, “a perjurer and a criminal,” spurring prosecution objections. “The videos you saw, without his testimony, prove absolutely nothing.”
The defense said that the gun was a starter pistol that shot only blanks – which they argued Relli knew – and Rocky carried only as a prop for protection.
The first video shown by the prosecution, captured from nearby but partly blocked, showed a physical struggle between two men – with two others intervening – outside a parking garage in Hollywood on the night of Nov. 6, 2021. One of them, wearing a black hoodie, pulls out a gun and points it, but does not fire it.
“The evidence in this case will show that the man in the black sweatshirt is the defendant, Rakim Mayers,” Przelomiec said, using Rocky’s legal name. “That evidence will be uncontradicted.”
Rocky has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, charges that could lead to up to 24 years in prison.
Przelomiec showed two more videos of the moment from other cameras, minutes after the first confrontation, when he said shots were fired about a block away. One shows a scuffle between four men in a tiny image in the corner of the frame. The other, shot at the same time, captures two gunshot sounds.
He also played a 911 call from minutes later.
“There’s been a shooting,” a woman with an Australian accent says. “We watched it. There were four men, and they were kind of fighting.”
The four men were all old friends, Przelomiec told the jurors. They had all been members of the A$AP Collective, a crew of creators established at a high school in New York around 2006.
Along with Rocky and two friends who were with him in Los Angeles for a concert performance, they included Relli.
Relli will testify that the two had been beefing. Relli believed that when they met up near the W Hotel, they would argue but reconcile, the prosecutor said. That changed quickly when Rocky pulled out a gun. But Relli still pursued him as he walked away.
“In his state of mind he never believed he was going to be shot,” Przelomiec said.
The defense lawyer argued that Relli was not scared because he “knew that gun wasn’t real.”
Relli was not seriously hurt. Przelomiec showed jurors a photo of tiny, bloody scrapes on Relli’s knuckles that he said may have come from the shooting, but that was irrelevant to the charges.
The defense argued that the injury, which Tacopina mocked, was important because Relli’s initial claims about it show his dishonesty.
“Oh my god, how is he gonna survive that scrape on his knuckles?” Tacopina said.
Tacopina argued that Relli had actually been the aggressor in both encounters, and that Rocky fired blank shots from his prop gun to stop Relli from attacking one of their A$AP crew members who was with him. He said that was why Relli scraped his knuckles.
Przelomiec also showed text messages from about 90 minutes after the incident, in which Rocky denies anything happened.
“U try killing me,” a message from Relli read.
Rocky responds, “wtf iz ut talking about.”
And Tacopina made hay of the fact that seven officers who searched the scene found neither shell casings, a weapon, or any suspects.
Relli went to police two days later, and presented a pair of 9 mm shell casings he said he had picked up from the scene himself.
“You will see that story fall apart so hard,” Tacopina said.
Relli has filed a civil lawsuit over the incident, and Przelomiec showed a text message from him to another friend from shortly after the incident saying he was going to get Rocky’s money because “he shot at me.”
Tacopina said the entire reason Relli went to police was that a civil lawyer would not take his case and sue Rocky unless he did.
Another prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, objected often, saying Tacopina was flagrantly and deliberately making arguments and unjustified claims that aren’t allowed during opening statements.
During a subsequent break, Lewin and Tacopina got in each other’s faces to shout in a heated exchange that broke with typical courtroom decorum. Another defense lawyer tried to get between them to quell the argument.
Rocky sat in the courtroom and watched with his lawyers, wearing a gray suit. His mother and sister were among the supporters sitting in his section. Rihanna, his longtime partner and the mother of his two toddler sons, was not in court, and is not expected to appear much if at all during the proceedings.
In an only-in-Hollywood moment, the first witness called by the prosecution was police Sgt. Thomas Zizzo, whose body camera video from the scene was shown.
He is the son of Erika Jayne, former star of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
Zizzo contradicted what Tacopina said in his opening, and testified that he and other officers responded to shooting reports by searching “every inch” of the area for shells.
“We may have missed something,” he said.
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