As A$AP Rocky remains held in a Swedish jail waiting to find out if he will be charged with a crime, freedom has come to one person connected to the case—one of the men the rapper charges came at him, forcing him to defend himself.
According to the Los Angeles Times, prosecutors in Sweden decided to free that man after apparently determining that while the man had been asked “repeatedly” to “leave” the presence of Rocky and his entourage, the man was then pushed “first.”
Per the Times, senior public prosecutor Daniel Suneson said Monday in a press release:
“The person who filed the counter-notice repeatedly asks the other person to leave. When he refuses to leave, the other person first pushes him away and then takes a grip around the other person’s neck and lifts him away a few meters. In this situation, the person throws his headphones on the notifier[.]”
“The person who filed the counter-notice” is apparently A$AP Rocky, explains the Times, which also notes that in widely seen video footage, Rocky can be seen picking up a man and throwing him across a street.
However, the prosecutor noted that the man also began to fight “which might be considered as right to self-defense.”
For now, Rocky will be kept locked up in Sweden until at least this coming Friday after a judge last week determined that Rocky was a flight risk. Rocky was arrested July 3 on suspicion of assault and has been jailed ever since while prosecutors determine whether to charge him.
Rocky maintains that his case is one of self-defense. In two other videos with footage that appears to have been taken prior to the actual fight, Rocky and his entourage can be seen and heard repeatedly asking two men to leave them alone and go on about their business.
“We don’t want to fight y’all,” Rocky says in the video. “We don’t want to go to jail.”
DISCUSSION
Ok but...he did. He bodily threw the guy who was following them around. Then beat and kicked him while he was on the ground along with two dudes in his entourage. So he got arrested and now he’s in jail.
Am I missing something? Did the guy they were kicking on the ground start a physical fight with them? I’m not seeing how three guys on one is “self-defense”.