LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rapper Tory Lanez was taken to the hospital following an assault on Monday at a prison in California, where he is serving a decade-long sentence for shooting fellow hip-hop artist Megan Thee Stallion in the feet, officials confirmed.
Daystar Peterson, known professionally as Tory Lanez, was attacked in a housing unit at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi around 7:20 a.m., according to Pedro Calderon Michel, a spokesperson for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in an email statement.
Michel did not provide details on the nature of the attack, but an update on Lanez’s Instagram account on Monday evening claimed that he had been stabbed 14 times and both of his lungs had collapsed. The post also mentioned that Lanez is able to breathe independently.
“Despite being in pain, he is talking normally, in good spirits, and deeply thankful to God that he is pulling through,” the post said, adding Lanez was stabbed in his back, torso, head and face.
Staff immediately gave Lanez medical aid and called 911, and he was taken to an outside hospital, Michel said. The prison’s investigative unit and the Kern County District Attorney’s Office are investigating, he said.
The prison is about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Los Angeles in the mountains of the Mojave Desert and houses about 1,700 medium- and maximum-security inmates.
In December 2022, Lanez was convicted of three felonies: assault with a semiautomatic firearm; having a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
Megan, whose legal name is Megan Pete, testified during the trial that in July 2020, after they left a party at Kylie Jenner’s Hollywood Hills home, Lanez fired the gun at the back of her feet and shouted for her to dance as she walked away from an SUV in which they had been riding.
She had bullet fragments in both feet that had to be surgically removed. It wasn’t until months after the incident that she publicly identified Lanez as the person who had fired the gun.
A judge rejected a motion for a new trial from Lanez’s lawyers, who are appealing his conviction. They did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Megan recently alleged that Lanez was harassing her from prison through surrogates, and in January a judge issued a protective order through 2030 ordering him to stop any such harassment or any other contact.
The 32-year-old Canadian Lanez began releasing mixtapes in 2009 and saw a steady rise in popularity, moving on to major label albums, two of which reached the top 10 on Billboard’s charts.
The case created a firestorm in the hip-hop community, churning up issues including the reluctance of Black victims to speak to police, gender politics in hip-hop, online toxicity, and the ramifications of misogynoir, a particular brand of misogyny Black women experience.
The often dramatic trial was packed with friends and family members of Lanez who felt he was a victim of both the justice system and the powerful people around Megan, who his managed by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation.
When the verdict was announced, Lanez’s father, Sonstar Peterson, jumped up and angrily denounced prosecutors and the system before he was dragged from the chaotic courtroom where many in the audience were shouting similar things. He later apologized to the judge.
Megan Thee Stallion, 30, was already a major rising star at the time of the shooting, and her music’s popularity has soared since. She won a Grammy for best new artist in 2021, and she had No. 1 singles with “Savage,” featuring Beyoncé, and as a guest on Cardi B’s “WAP.”
