Lorne Thomson/Redferns
Tuesday concluded another day of testimonies in the criminal trial of Tory Lanez. A man by the name of Sean Kelly was called to the stand on behalf of the defense team. And according to VARIETY, Kelly’s testimony may have thrown them an unexpected “curveball.”
According to Rolling Stone, Kelly was in his bedroom around 4 a.m. on July 12, 2020. He looked out his window and allegedly saw four people fighting and shouting at one another. Kelly called the confrontation “quite violent.”
Lanez’s defense team decided to use Kelly as a witness after he spoke with an investigator in 2021. He recalled seeing an initial muzzle flash close to a woman’s hand that morning. It allegedly occurred during a physical altercation between Megan Thee Stallion and Kelsey Harris while standing near an open door of the Cadillac Escalade the group was riding in. Kelly firmly believes one of the women fired the first shot, though he doesn’t recall seeing a weapon.
The defense team was hoping for Kelly’s recollection of events to inspire reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury.
I want to be clear, I never saw a gun, OK, I just saw flashes.
When asked whose hand he saw the flashes from first, Kelly continued.
The girl. But they were all together, they were very close together.
When Kelly tried to recall whether Lanez was inside the vehicle or outside with the group when he witnessed these flashes, he drew confusion. First telling the court that Lanez was inside the vehicle. Then changed his answer to say that Lanez may have been outside already.
This wasn’t something that took a long time.
In Kelly’s 2021 conversation with the investigator, he alleged that Tory then tried to wrestle the gun away from Harris. On the witness stand, Kelly added more details — never including Lanez’s intention to wrestle the gun away from Harris. Or de-escalate the violent altercation.
I just saw he was very angry, shouting, and then the flashes then came from him. I never saw a gun. They were all fighting, so I just assumed he grabbed the gun… I believe that they were fighting. Then he had the gun, and he started shooting.
During cross-examination, Kelly added that Lanez was “firing everywhere” while shouting a “torrent of abuse.”
He was going crazy… really agitated.
Kelly added that Megan Thee Stallion was “crawling along, crawling, stumbling.”
She was in a fetal position. She was all curled up on the floor and they were punching and kicking her. They were all beating her.
Kelly then alleged that Harris, Lanez, and his driver Jauquan Smith looked as if they were going to pick Megan up and “throw her into the river.” He even went so far as to say that it looked as if the group intended to kill her.
The larger gentleman stood up and said the police were coming. They picked the girl up, and to me it seemed they were going to throw her into the river. There’s a stream (nearby). It looked like they were about to throw her in there… It appeared to me when I was on the phone that they were trying to kill her. They dragged her across the street, then got in the car and sped off.
Kelly finished off his testimony by adding that his son was with him that night. And he was “more concerned” about the boy’s safety than hyper-focusing on every moment of the violent altercation.
Can I just say, while this was all going on, my son was with me. I told him to get on the floor. I was more concerned about him.
As the outlet reports, Lanez has pleaded not guilty to three felony charges including assault with a firearm causing great bodily injury; concealing a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle. He also has the recently added count of discharging a firearm with gross negligence. If convicted, he reportedly faces 22 years and eight months in prison. He also faces deportation because he is a citizen of Canada.
