In a bombshell recorded interview played in open court on Friday (Dec. 16), Kelsey Harris, Megan Thee Stallion‘s former friend and assistant, claimed several times that she saw Tory Lanez shoot the “Savage” rapper and then bribed her and Harris to keep quiet — contradicting her in-court testimony on Wednesday and Thursday.
Judge David Herriford allowed prosecutors to play the entire 80-minute recording in front of the jury on day five of the blockbuster trial, in which Lanez is charged, among other things, with shooting Megan in the foot on July 12, 2020. The interview — clips from which were previously played in court during Harris’ two-day stint on the witness stand — was conducted on Sept. 14, 2022, in the presence of Deputy District Attorneys Kathy Ta and Alexander Bott, senior investigator Jody Little and Harris’ husband Darien Smith, with Harris’ two attorneys present via phone.
In the recording, Harris could be heard telling prosecutors that an argument between Megan and Lanez that started during a get-together at Kylie Jenner’s house on the night of July 12, 2020, and escalated on the car ride home ended with Tory shooting at Megan five times from the passenger side window of the SUV being driven by Lanez’s security guard Jauquan Smith. “The way Tory was angling the gun was down … definitely in her direction,” recalled Harris, who also claimed Lanez threatened to “shoot” her prior to allegedly firing the gun at Megan later that night.
Harris — who befriended Megan in college before becoming her assistant in 2019 — went on to emotionally recount the immediate aftermath of the gunfire, describing how she “immediately” ran to Megan’s side to find “blood” on her friend. “So in my head, [Megan] had been shot,” she said.
According to Harris, Lanez then exited the vehicle and began walking towards Meg, at which point Harris said she put herself between them — leading Lanez to “physically assault” her with his hands. She then claimed that after leading Lanez back to the car to “distract” him from Megan, he “started pulling” her by her hair and neck. “That’s when I started fearing for my life,” she continued.
Harris, audibly crying at this point in the recording, then claimed that the violence de-escalated once Megan returned to the car. Once they got back in the vehicle and continued driving — with Megan’s bloody leg propped on her own — Harris said Megan then asked her to call Megan’s manager T. Farris. Harris additionally claimed that she sent a text message to Megan’s security guard Justin Edison that read, “Help. 911. Tory shot Meg,” as well as a Facebook message to her mother requesting help. “I was really hurt [emotionally],” Harris continued, adding, “I didn’t realize I had bruises [from the attack].”
Once police vehicles pulled over the car, Harris said Lanez quickly began bribing the two women. “Please y’all don’t say anything…. I’m about to sign a huge deal … I’ll give you guys $1 million each,” she claimed he told them. After police became involved — and Megan’s manager Farris arrived on the scene — Harris, Megan and Lanez were separated, with Megan going to the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai and Harris going to the police station, where photos of her with blood on her legs (shown in court on Wednesday) were taken.
Later on in the recording, Harris can be heard claiming that Lanez tried to bribe her again not long after the incident. After showing up at her hotel with Smith and another man, she said, Lanez apologized and asked Harris if she wanted to work for him, or for him to get her a lawyer. “[I didn’t know] if that was his way of trying to pay,” she added.
Harris’ interview with prosecutors in September was a far cry from her time on the stand. During her two days of court testimony, Harris acted evasive with prosecutors and defense attorneys and even recanted claims she made in September that Lanez had threatened to shoot her on July 12, stating that some of what she said wasn’t “accurate. There were some things I wasn’t truthful about to protect myself.” She did not go into greater detail about what she was protecting herself from, nor which parts of the interview were less than “100% truthful.”
During the September interview as well as her time in court, Harris stated that she has not seen Megan in person since the incident, noting that the last time they had contact was when Megan offered to pay for her housing in the aftermath of the incident. Harris also testified that Megan’s team cut off contact with her in the wake of the shooting.
On Tuesday, Megan testified that the fight that led up to the July 12 shooting derived in part from Lanez’s sexual relationships with both women as well as derogatory comments she made about the state of Lanez’s career. She claimed that after getting out of the car, “I started walking away and I hear Tory yell, ‘Dance, bi—!’” before being fired on by the singer. Though she initially denied to police officers that she’d been shot, in an Instagram post three days later (July 15, 2020) she confirmed that she’d been shot and had undergone surgery to remove the bullets. In an Instagram Live session on August 20, 2020, she named Lanez as her attacker.
Lanez currently faces three felony charges: assault with a semiautomatic firearm; carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle; and discharging a firearm with gross negligence, the latter of which was added to the list of charges ahead of the trial last week. If convicted on all three counts, he faces 22 years in prison.
The trial resumes Monday (Dec. 19).
This is a developing story.
