Megan Thee Stallion Shares Details of 2020 Shooting and Her Mental Health Battles in Latest Interview
On July 12, 2020, news of Megan Thee Stallion’s reported shooting following an alleged altercation with Canadian rapper Daystar Peterson, popularly known as Tory Lanez, filled earlier morning news and replayed across many social media platforms. While news of this incident has publicly quelled as both rappers await official and final hearings in court, Megan Thee Stallion sat down with CBS News reporter Gayle King to share her story in her first interview following the incident.
Holding back tears, Megan Thee Stallion recounted the events of the evening leading up to the alleged altercation starting off at a house party hosted by media personality Kylie Jenner. “I had went there and we were just hanging out and I was ready to go because I had been there all day.” Continuing on, she described an argument breaking out once her close friend Kelsey Harris and rapper Lanez leave the event, between two unidentified individuals in the backseat. “The argument wasn’t with me, the argument was with the two people in the backseat. So I asked the driver to pull the car over like I’m done with this… I get back in the car…the argument in the car is getting worse and I don’t want to be in this car no more, because I see it’s getting crazy.” shared Megan Thee Stallion.
With the argument worsening, Megan Thee Stallion described leaving the car a second time leading up to the moment in which she is shot, allegedly by rapper Lanez. “Everything happened so fast. All I hear is this man screaming ‘dance b—’ and he starts shooting…standing up over the window shooting. I didn’t even want to move. I didn’t want to move too quickly because I’m like ‘oh my God, if I take the wrong step I don’t know if he could shoot something that’s like super important. I don’t know if he could shoot me and kill me.’ I was really scared.”
Fearful and confused, the teary-eyed rapper recounted looking down and realizing that she had in fact been shot. “I look down at my feet…the adrenaline is pumping so hard, I’m not sure if he hit me. I feel it but I don’t understand what’s happening… I look down at my feet and I’m like ‘oh my God like I am really bleeding.’”
Now sobbing, Megan Thee Stallion shared with King “I can’t believe he shot me.”
Moments after, she crawled to safety in a nearby driveway to which multiple police and helicopters arrived shortly after. But it was not comfort that Megan Thee Stallion described feeling in that moment, but rather fear of her and her friends losing their lives to police violence. “The George Floyd incident had just happened. The police are definitely very much ‘shoot first, ask questions after’…there’s a hot gun in the car, I’m bleeding, I’ve been shot. They are about to kill somebody. Something bad is about to happen,” Megan Thee Stallion shared with King. Due to fear of police violence, when questioned, Megan Thee Stallion chose to omit getting shot and instead said she had stepped on glass. “I remembered them asking ‘what’s happening? What happened to you?’ And I didn’t want them to kill any of us or shoot any of us. So I said I just stepped on glass. For some reason I was just trying to protect all of us…I didn’t want them to kill us. Even though this person just did this to me. My first reaction was still to just try and save us. I didn’t want to see any of us die.”
Between the unbelief of the general public, social backlash and still dealing with the loss of her mother, Holly Thomas, Megan Thee Stallion shared her battles with anxiety and mental health following everything that transpired. “My anxiety is worse. My relationship with people [has] gotten very cold, because I’m not as trusting as I used to be. I’ve got this wall and I don’t want to make any friends…I probably don’t even hold a conversation longer than 30 minutes because I feel like every time I talk I’m on the verge of tears.” Through all this, Megan Thee Stallion wishes she had the comfort of her mother to see her through. “Half the time I want to just pick up the phone and call my mom and be like ‘what do I do?’ It’s too much. I feel crazy. I’m sad, and I feel like I have to hold it in because I have to be strong for so many people.”
Megan Thee Stallion’s story is not one of singularity. Her story is not one that stands alone in a myriad of opposing voices, but rather reflects the state of Black women living in America. Throughout time Black women have been harmed by the very communities that swore to protect them and left vulnerable to countless acts of police violence and the opposing voices of racism. With this experience, many Black women have faced the same anxiety and depression that Megan Thee Stallion has after traumatic events. And yet it is Black women that continue to show up for their communities. It is them who continue to protect Black men, marginalized folk and those who have harmed them from the outside forces of racism. But who protects Black women? Who comes to their aid? Who stands in the middle?
Black Women, like Megan Thee Stallion, deserve to be heard and believed after trauma. They deserve the proper resources for mental health recovery. They deserve to be able to rely on their community without fear of harm. They deserve to live free without oppressive harm. While Megan Thee Stallion and Torey Lanez await the final sentencing for this case, society must ask itself what must we do for the betterment of Black women? Society must begin to believe Black women after trauma and not aid in the deterioration of their mental health. For if we as a society do not break this cycle, Black women will continue to be left vulnerable, left depressed and left marginalized.