Sophia Michaels
The man who says he witnessed the roadside dispute that landed Megan Thee Stallion in the hospital testified Tuesday that he saw an initial muzzle flash near two women fighting then an “agitated” male alleged to be Tory Lanez “firing everywhere.”
Sean Kelly, who was in a bedroom shortly after 4 a.m. on July 12, 2020, told jurors he peered out his window and saw four people fighting and shouting at each other during a violent confrontation on his residential road in Los Angeles.
Kelly was called as a defense witness at Lanez’s felony assault trial because he told a defense investigator he believed he saw an initial muzzle flash close to a woman’s hand during a purported physical altercation between Megan and her former friend Kelsey Harris near an open door of Lanez’s Cadillac Escalade. His testimony, intended to generate reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors, may have done the opposite.
Kelly testified under oath that while he remembers seeing the first muzzle flash nearest to “the girls,” he didn’t see a firearm. “I want to be clear, I never saw a gun, OK, I just saw flashes,” he testified.
“Whose hand did you see the flashes from first?” George Mgdesyan, Lanez’s lawyer, asked.
“The girl,” Kelly replied. “But they were all together, they were very close together.”
He then waffled on whether Lanez, whose real name is Daystar Peterson, was still inside the vehicle at this point, or outside. At first, Kelly seemed to place Peterson inside the car during the first alleged gunshot. But then he vacillated, telling Deputy District Attorney Alexander Bott that Peterson — repeatedly referred to as the “shorter” male — may have been outside already.
“This wasn’t something that took a long time,” he said.
“What happened next? Did you see the gentleman join?” Mgdesyan questioned, asking if he recalled telling an investigator that it looked like Peterson was trying to wrestle the gun away from Harris.
“I just saw he was very angry, shouting, and he, then, the flashes then came from him. I never saw a gun. …They were all fighting so I just assumed he grabbed the gun.”
On cross examination, Kelly again recalled seeing the “small guy” get out of the SUV around the time of the first alleged muzzle flash.
“He didn’t get out firing a gun, [but] he was very agitated,” Kelly said.
“Were his arms outstretched?” Bott asked.
“Yes,” Kelly said.
“What was he pointing at?” Bott asked.
“He was firing everywhere,” Kelly responded, saying he saw four of five shots from the area of Peterson’s hands.
After the series of shots, a female victim who had been seen “kicking all the time” got out of the car and was “bleeding” he said, and added: “She was crawling along, crawling, stumbling.”
Asked if he remembered telling a defense investigator that he believed the first muzzle flash attributed to the girl was inside the vehicle, he said, “Yes,” but he also thought the first flash was fireworks.
“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,” he testified.
Peterson, 30, already pleaded not guilty to three felony charges in the high-profile case: assault with a firearm causing great bodily injury; concealing a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle; and the recently added count of discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
If convicted as charged, the Alone at Prom rapper is facing up to 22 years and eight months in prison and subsequent deportation since he’s a citizen of Canada.
On Monday, prosecutors attempted to add two new witnesses tampering charges based on testimony from Megan and Harris about “statements the defendant made in the car, offering them a million dollars” to stay silent about the shooting. Judge David Herriford questioned why prosecutors waited so long to file the additional charges and denied the motion.
