Tory Lanez Officially Charged For Shooting Megan Thee Stallion, Faces 22 Years In Prison

Tory Lanez was charged Thursday with assaulting a woman who is obviously Megan Thee Stallion, per information provided by the Los Angeles district attorney’s office. He faces a possible maximum sentence of 22 years and eight months in prison, according to the announcement.

While Megan is not identified by name, all of the other details line up with the July 12 incident in which she has claimed Lanez fired a gun at her as she exited the car in which they had been traveling, resulting in injuries to her feet that required surgery.

“The rap artist known as Tory Lanez has been charged with assaulting a female friend in the Hollywood Hills earlier this year, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced today,” the announcement reads.

“Daystar Peterson aka Tory Lanez (dob 7/27/92) was charged today in case BA490599 with one felony count each of assault with a semiautomatic firearm – personal use of a firearm – and carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle. The defendant also faces a gun allegation and that he personally inflicted great bodily injury.”

His arraignment is scheduled for October 13; Deputy District Attorney Kathy Ta of the Family Violence Division is prosecuting the case.

“On July 12, the defendant and the 24-year-old victim got into an argument while riding in an SUV in the Hollywood Hills. The victim exited the vehicle and Peterson is accused of shooting several times at her feet and wounding her.

“If convicted as charged, the defendant faces a possible maximum sentence of 22 years and eight months in state prison. The case remains under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department, Hollywood Division,” the announcement concludes. (Note: Megan was actually 25 at the time of the incident, but all of the other details align with accounts of the incident.)

Reached by Variety, reps for Lanez and Megan did not immediately have comment.

In the early hours of July 12, Lanez was arrested in Hollywood for possessing a concealed weapon; Megan (real name: Megan Pete) and two other people were in the vehicle with him at the time of the arrest, although the shooting took place beforehand.

While the incident was reported in the press just hours after it occurred, details have been slow to unfold. Most of them have been provided by Megan herself via social media, culminating in her accusing Lanez of being the gunman after weeks of increasingly damning hints.

“Yes, this n—a Tory shot me,” she said in a fiery video posted to Instagram on Aug. 20. “You shot me, and you got your publicist and your people to [talk to] these blogs, lying and s––. Stop lying!” Various individuals claimed on social media that Megan had physically abused Lanez or faked the shooting.

Later in the session, she said that she did not tell law-enforcement officers that Lanez was the shooter because of recent police violence.

“I didn’t tell the police nothing because I didn’t want us to get in no more trouble,” she says.

Lanez effectively denied her accusations in a 17-track album released last month in which nearly every song addresses the incident and its fallout, and what Lanez apparently perceives as betrayal from nearly all quarters. The hour-plus long album contains song after song packed with deeply defensive lyrics and frequent verbal jabs at Megan, his critics, “friends turning into enemies” and the like. A key lyric reads, “How the f— you get shot in your foot, don’t hit no bones or tendons?”

On the evening of the incident, Megan, Lanez, his bodyguard, and an unidentified woman who is speculated to be Megan’s close friend Kelsey Nicole attended a party at Kylie Jenner’s Hollywood home. Later that evening, the four were pulled over by police after a report of gunfire outside a second residence; a witness had described the car in which they were traveling to officers. While initial reports said Megan had cut her feet on broken glass inside the car, she later claimed to be the “victim of a shooting,” but without identifying the gunman, who was widely suspected to be Lanez.

Megan later then posted photos of her injured foot on Instagram but soon deleted them. More posts discussing the incident ensued; then on Aug. 20 she tweeted, “Lie one more time and ima quit sparing you” — her claim that Lanez was the shooter followed shortly afterward.

Surveillance footage of the arrest shows Lanez, the unidentified woman, and later Megan lying spread-eagled on the ground near the vehicle, surrounded by multiple police cars with a helicopter hovering overhead. Lanez was released a few hours after his arrest on a $35,000 bond.

In a cover interview with Variety nine days after the shooting, Megan declined to discuss details but did say:, “I’m not the type of person who can stay down for a long time. I don’t like to be sad or keep myself in a dark place, because I know it could be the worst thing happening, but the pain and the bad things don’t last for long.”

The incident has done nothing to slow her fast-rising career. She and Cardi B released the smash single “WAP” in August, and she released her first single of her own, “Don’t Stop,” last Friday and performed it on “Saturday Night Live” the following evening. During her performance she made a strong statement calling for justice for the death of Breonna Taylor, while she and her dancers stood in front of a backdrop reading “Protect Black Women.”