A Los Angeles judge on Tuesday sentenced rapper Tory Lanez to 10 years in prison for shooting hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion in July 2020.
Lanez, 31, was convicted in December of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, having a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle, and discharging a firearm with gross negligence, as CrimeOnline previously reported.
Lanez’s attorney called Megan a “liar” in his closing arguments and said he plans to appeal the conviction.
LA Superior Court Judge David Herriford deducted about 10 months from the sentence for the time Lanez has been behind bars since the conviction, the Associated Press reported.
The judge said he found it “difficult to reconcile” how friends described Lanez during the sentencing hearing with the man who fired the gun at the singer’s feet, shouting for her to “dance” as she walked away from the SUV they’d been riding in together.
“Sometimes good people do bad things,” Herriford said. “Actions have consequences, and there are no winners in this case.”
The prosecutor read a statement from Megan, who had surgery to remove bullet fragments from her feet, on Monday during the hearing.
“Since I was viciously shot by the defendant, I have not experienced a single day of peace,” Megan said in a statement read by a prosecutor on Monday. “Slowly but surely, I’m healing and coming back, but I will never be the same.”
Lanez asked Herriford for probation or a lenient sentence.
“If I could turn back the series of events that night and change them,” I would, he said. “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,” he added.
Despite Lanez’s claims of responsibility, his attorneys, friends, and family complained about both the sentence and the conviction.
“We’re extremely disappointed,” Lanez’s attorney, Jose Baez, said after the hearing. “I have seen vehicular homicide and other cases where there’s death, and the defendant still gets less than 10 years.”
It was “really just another example of someone being punished for their celebrity status and someone being utilized to set an example,” Baez said. “And he’s not an example. He’s a human being.”
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[Featured image: Left: Tory Lanez at the Festival d’ete de Quebec in 2018/Amy Harris/Invision/AP and Megan Thee Stallion at the premiere of “P-Valley” in 2022/Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP]
