This combination photo shows Tory Lanez performing at the Festival d’ete de Quebec, July 11, 2018, in Quebec City, Canada, left, and Megan Thee Stallion at the premiere of “P-Valley,” June 2, 2022, in Los Angeles. (Uncredited/AP)
Tory Lanez was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison for shooting Megan Thee Stallion after a ritzy Hollywood Hills party in July 2020.
Prosecutors had asked for a 13-year sentence, while Lanez’s defense team requested probation and transfer to a rehab facility.
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Lanez, 31, formally faced up to 22 years in prison after he was convicted last December of three felonies: assault with a semiautomatic firearm, having a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle and discharging a firearm with gross negligence. Lanez was free on bail prior to his conviction, but he has spent the past seven months behind bars.
The “Luv” artist, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, claimed throughout the case that he never shot at Megan. He most recently argued that prosecutors withheld evidence that could have exonerated him, but in May the judge tossed his motion for a new trial.
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Tory Lanez enters a Los Angeles courthouse for his trial on Dec. 13, 2022. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)
However, moments before his sentencing, the Canadian rapper admitted his fault and requested that Judge David Herriford extend him grace, asking for probation or a minimal prison sentence.
“If I could turn back the series of events that night and change them, I would,” Lanez said in the courtroom. “The victim was my friend. The victim is someone I still care for to this day. Everything I did wrong that night, I take full responsibility for.”
Herriford expressed the decision was “difficult to reconcile.”
“Sometimes good people do bad things,” Herriford said. “Actions have consequences, and there are no winners in this case.”
Tory spoke for several minutes. He said he still cares about Megan. He called her “someone I still care for dearly to this day” regardless of what she may think of him.
He said “the victim’s my friend.” He talked about bonding with her over the loss of their mothers. — Meghann Cuniff (@meghanncuniff) August 8, 2023
Megan, who has previously given multiple emotional interviews on the shooting, did not appear in court for the sentencing hearing. Her victim-impact statement was instead read aloud by Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Kathy Ta.
“Since I was viciously shot by the defendant, I have not experienced a single day of peace,” the statement from the 28-year-old read. “Slowly but surely, I’m healing and coming back, but I will never be the same.”
The two artists were leaving a party on July 12, 2020 at Kylie Jenner’s home in the Hollywood Hills when an argument erupted in the vehicle they were riding in.
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Megan said she stepped out of the car and Lanez then fired at her feet while telling her to “Dance, b—h.” She was hospitalized, and doctors removed bullet fragments from her feet.
Megan Thee Stallion performs at the Reading Music Festival, England, Aug. 26 2022. (Scott Garfitt/Scott Garfitt/Invision/AP)
Ahead of the trial, Lanez claimed on social media that Megan was lying to set him up. Megan later testified that the shooting and Lanez’s comments “messed up my whole life.”
“I wish he would’ve just shot and killed me if I knew I was going to have to go through this torture,” she told the court.
“For years, my attacker laughed and joked about my trauma,” Megan said in ELLE magazine. “For years, my attacker peddled false narratives about what happened on the night of July 12, 2020. For years, my attacker tried to leverage social media to take away my power.”
But she wasn’t the only Megan who Lanez targeted on social media as the case played out. Law & Crime News reporter Meghann Cuniff got her fair share of online trolls, but there was one attack she was never expecting.
“It was funny because I actually found out about it from a direct message from somebody,” Cuniff told the Daily News, recounting the moment she discovered Lanez posted about her. “They did a screenshot of his Instagram story and the message was like, ‘I just want you to know I’m sincerely sorry for the harassment you’re about to get because of this.”
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Wish he’d @‘d me or at least spelled my name correctly. 😭😭 — Meghann Cuniff (@meghanncuniff) July 13, 2023
The convicted rapper posted, “With all due respect…Please disregard anything Megan Cuniff reports on Tory Lanez. Her objective, perspective/narrative has always been negative and extremely biased towards him,” read the story, which was signed by The Umbrella, a reference to Lanez’s record label and clothing company.
Cuniff addressed the statement by tweeting, “Wish he’d @’d me or at least spelled my name correctly.”
The viral reporter now laughs addressing the exchange, but admits the aftermath was “just crazy.”
“It’s kind of ridiculous on his part,” Cuniff told The News. “One thing that surprised me when I started covering the trial was how obsessed Lanez obviously was with the social media traffic and the chatter on this. And it’s like ‘That’s not going to matter in the courtroom. They really, really thought image was going to help them in the courtroom.”
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“He has some fans that got pretty vicious with me, especially around the time of the motion for a new trial,” Cuniff continued, “but it’s kind of a small microcosm of what Megan Thee Stallion has been dealing with for three years. From what I experienced, I was like, ‘Wow, if this is what they’re doing to me, I can only imagine what they were doing to her.’”
Megan Thee Stallion talks about initially being shocked by the backlash she received during the trial, which pulled her into a depression.
“I didn’t feel like making music. I was in such a low place that I didn’t even know what I wanted to rap about. I wondered if people even cared anymore,” she wrote in her ELLE essay. “It never crossed my mind that people wouldn’t believe me. Still, I knew the truth and the indisputable facts would prevail.”
Lanez’s defense team argued at trial that Megan’s former friend, Kelsey Harris, was the one who pulled the trigger. Harris was also riding in the car on the night of the party, but jurors didn’t buy it.
With News Wire Services