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A$AP Rocky appeared in court in Los Angeles to plead not guilty to the shooting of A$AP Relli ahead of an upcoming trial date.
On Monday (January 8), A$AP Rocky appeared before Judge Karla Kerlin in a Los Angeles courtroom to enter a plea of not guilty in the shooting of his former friend and collaborator, A$AP Relli which took place in Hollywood in November 2021. The rapper, also known as Rakim Myers, was accompanied by his legal team of Joe Tacopina and Sarah Cohen. After entering the plea, A$AP Rocky left the court and had no comment for reporters waiting outside. “We have a lot of evidence that we have a strong suspicion the prosecutors don’t know about,” Tacopina said to the press outside of the courthouse.
A$AP Rocky had been arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in April 2022 in connection to the criminal incident. A$AP Relli, also known as Terrell Ephron, alleges that A$AP Rocky fired a gun in his direction twice, injuring him when the bullet hit him in his left hand. Surveillance video of the incident which included timestamps of the gun being fired off camera, along with testimony admitted to the court last November compelled another judge to rule that there was sufficient evidence for a trial to proceed. A pre-trial hearing has been ordered to take place on March 6.
A$AP Rocky is facing two counts of assault with a semi-automatic firearm and one count of personal use of a firearm. In a statement to Rolling Stone, Tacopina defended his client and said of A$AP Relli: “He’s a failed associate — ex-associate — of Rocky’s, and he’s jealous. He was trying to get money from Rocky. He wanted Rocky to support him. He made it clear. There were repeated attempts where he tried to ask for money in lieu of not causing problems for Rocky. That’s what he said. We have all this memorialized in text messages and otherwise, so it’s an extortion.”
A$AP Rocky Pleads Not Guilty In A$AP Relli Shooting was originally published on hiphopwired.com
