After Kelsey Harris, a key witness in the trial of Tory Lanez, claimed on the stand Thursday that she either didn’t see or couldn’t recall the circumstances of the shooting of Megan Thee Stallion, prosecutors on Friday played the entirety of an 80-minute taped interview she did three months ago — in which Harris was heard vividly recalling that Lanez did indeed fire his gun at Megan.
In the September interview with prosecutors, Harris was heard describing how she looked up to see Lanez, who was still partially inside their vehicle, shooting at Megan, who was walking away.
“I looked up maybe about the second or third gunshot,” Harris said in the audio being played for jurors, as reported by Rolling Stone. “You see Tory, he’s now in the front seat. I guess he must have jumped over in a smooth transition, and he’s leaning over the door, it’s open, and he’s leaning over the door, the front right passenger. He’s shooting over the top of the door.”
Harris further said in the audiotape that Megan “was walking away when this happened, but by the third or fourth shot, she was facing towards us, and I would describe it as like a deer in headlights.” She added that “the way Tory was angling the gun, it wasn’t like straight, it was, like, down, definitely in her direction.”
Megan Thee Stallion suffered wounds to her feet that she described to police at the scene as the result of broken glass, but later said were caused by gunshots from Lanez (legal name: Daystar Peterson). A surgeon who operated on her feet after the altercation confirmed he had removed bullet fragments.
To say that Harris has been a reluctant witness on the stand would be an understatement. After being unabashed about what went down in the September interview, she defiantly refused to repeat much of her testimony in her time on the stand, sometimes pleading the fifth amendment, sometimes saying she could not remember, sometimes directly contradicting her earlier statements to prosecutors. Harris made it clear in her testimony that there is no love lost between her and her one-time friend, but also that she resents the insinuation by Lanez’ attorneys that she might have been the one firing the gun.
Prosecutors have asked if Harris is coming under pressure from Lanez’ camp to change or forget her story, which she denied on the stand.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David Herriford changed his position on whether prosecutors could play the full tape for jurors as testimony continued this week. Initially, he allowed only snippets, to prompt her memory, but after Harris continued to contradict her earlier statements or maintain that she couldn’t remember the proceedings even after taped excerpts were played, Herriford made the decision Thursday to allow a full airing on Friday.
One of the few details from her September interview that Harris indicated was accurate during her time on the stand this week was a statement that Lanez had threatened to shoot her, not long before the shooting of Megan. Jurors heard more about that when the tape was played Friday.
“He said, ‘My [N-word], I’ll shoot you,’” Harris said Lanez told her, as heard in the interview. “He said that to me, and he reached like he was going to grab something, reached toward the middle console, but he never pulled anything.”
Harris said on the tape that after the shooting began — in which Megan had become the target, not her, after some mutual taunting about their careers — she saw her then-friend bleeding. She further said that Lanez offered her and Megan $1 million each not to tell arriving officers the truth about the attack, per TMZ’s account of the trial.
