A$AP Rocky's accuser says despite his inconsistent story, the truth is the rapper fired a gun at him

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man who alleges A$AP Rocky fired a handgun at him in 2021 said Thursday that his story may have changed over the past three years, but his fading memory doesn't change what fundamentally happened.

“A gun was pulled on me. It was pointed at me, and it was fired later,” the man, who goes by A$AP Relli, said at the Los Angeles trial of Rocky, his former friend. “It’s been three years. If he was innocent he would be home a long time ago.”

Rihanna, the superstar singer and Rocky's partner, watched from the audience for the second straight day.

After the jury left for the day, Superior Court Mark Arnold said that he hadn't heard the latter part of the statement, and would tell them to disregard it when they returned for the rest of the cross-examination Friday.

Relli, whose legal name is Terell Ephron, testified that when the confrontation began on a Hollywood street, Rocky pointed a gun at his stomach and head, but it wasn’t actually touching him, and that Rocky said he was going to kill him. Rocky's lawyer Joe Tacopina confronted him with a prosecutor’s interview in 2022 when he said the gun was pressed into his stomach, and he hadn't remembered what Rocky said.

Relli broke courtroom decorum to shout at Rocky, “You did this to yourself” earlier in the day. The judge admonished him. Relli responded, “He was staring at me!”

Rocky, whose legal name is Rakim Athelaston Mayers, sat at the defense table in a black suit and did not audibly respond. He is charged with two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic handgun for allegedly firing at Relli, his friend since high school. The charges, with a conviction, could lead to up to 25 years in prison.

Rihanna, who has two toddler sons with Rocky, caused a stir with her first appearance at his trial Wednesday. She returned to the same spot in Rocky's section on Thursday, sitting between his mother and sister. Surreptitiously, she entered the courtroom before most of the audience. She wore a white top and gold earrings, and calmly followed the proceedings.

Tacopina's questioning broached the initial confrontation between Rocky and Relli, but when the trial ended for the day, had still not reached the actual moment when the shots were allegedly fired.

He spent much of it examining Relli's attitude toward Rocky leading up to the shooting. Relli was frequently frustrated and evasive, demanding to know why he was being asked certain questions and answering, “I don’t recall” before others were even finished.

He denied that he had been upset with the Rocky before the alleged shooting, as the defense confronted him with text messages and previous testimony that suggested otherwise.

“You trying to make me look like I got some kind of animosity toward this dude, I don’t,” he said. “I never did. To this day, I don’t.”

Tacopina showed Relli text messages from about two months before the incident, when he swore at Rocky and called him “fake-ass,” after Rocky had allegedly failed to support one of his projects.

In another text message from a few weeks before the confrontation, Relli said he was going to beat Rocky up if he didn't pay for a deceased mutual friend's body to be returned to New York as promised. Relli said he learned later that Rocky had in fact paid.

And Tacopina showed texts from just before the Nov. 6, 2021, incident, when Relli texted Rocky: “you got all these fake animosity towards me lol beat me up” and “I wish you would.”

Relli responded from the stand, “That doesn't mean ‘bring a gun.’”

He said he didn't know why he had deleted that text exchange from his phone before handing it over to police.

He testified under prosecution questioning earlier that Rocky had pulled a gun on him and fired it, grazing his hand. Rocky's lawyers say the shots he fired were from a starter pistol that shoots only blanks that he carries as a prop.

Rocky and Rihanna, both 36, have two sons together: 2-year-old RZA Athelston Mayers and 1-year-old Riot Rose Mayers.

The singer and the rapper, who are both fashion moguls, first became close when he provided a verse when the collaborated on one of her songs in 2012, and became a couple in 2020.

Raised in Harlem, Rocky’s rap songs became a phenomenon on the streets of New York in 2011. He had his mainstream breakthrough when his first studio album went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2013.

He’s set to have his biggest career year as a multimedia star. This Sunday, he’s nominated for a Grammy Award at the ceremony at Crypto.com Arena just two miles from his trial.

He’s also set to act opposite Denzel Washington in a film directed by Spike Lee, and to co-chair the Met Gala in May.

An image of a bullet casing is shown on a screen during A$AP Rocky's trial at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025. (Frazer Harrison/Pool Photo via AP)

Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec, left, reviews an image displayed on a screen as he stands next to A$AP Relli during A$AP Rocky's trial at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025. (Frazer Harrison/Pool Photo via AP)

Judge Mark S. Arnold speaks to attorneys before opening remarks in the trial of Rakim Mayers, aka A$AP Rocky, at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles, Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via AP, Pool)

Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec, left, shows a document to A$AP Relli during A$AP Rocky's trial at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025. (Frazer Harrison/Pool via AP)

Defense attorney Joe Tacopina listens to opening remarks from the prosecuting attorney during the trial of his client, Rakim Mayers, aka A$AP Rocky, at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles, Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via AP, Pool)

Rapper A$AP Rocky arrives at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

A$AP Relli testifies during A$AP Rocky's trial at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025. (Frazer Harrison/Pool via AP)

FILE - Collaboration of the year honoree A$AP Rocky, right, and Rihanna attend the 38th annual Footwear News Achievement Awards at Cipriani South Street on Dec. 4, 2024, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, file)

Rapper A$AP Rocky arrives at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A private lunar lander carrying a drill, vacuum and other experiments for NASA touched down on the moon Sunday, the latest in a string of companies looking to kickstart business on Earth's celestial neighbor ahead of astronaut missions.

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander descended from lunar orbit on autopilot, aiming for the slopes of an ancient volcanic dome in an impact basin on the moon’s northeastern edge of the near side.

Confirmation of successful touchdown came from the company's Mission Control outside Austin, Texas, following the action some 225,000 miles (360,000 kilometers) away.

“You all stuck the landing. We’re on the moon,” Firefly’s Will Coogan, chief engineer for the lander, reported.

An upright and stable landing makes Firefly — a startup founded a decade ago — the first private outfit to put a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling over. Even countries have faltered, with only five claiming success: Russia, the U.S., China, India and Japan.

A half hour after landing, Blue Ghost started to send back pictures from the surface, the first one a selfie somewhat obscured by the sun's glare. The second shot included the home planet, a blue dot glimmering in the blackness of space.

Two other companies’ landers are hot on Blue Ghost’s heels, with the next one expected to join it on the moon later this week.

Blue Ghost — named after a rare U.S. species of fireflies — had its size and shape going for it. The squat four-legged lander stands 6-foot-6 (2 meters) tall and 11 feet (3.5 meters) wide, providing extra stability, according to the company.

Launched in mid-January from Florida, the lander carried 10 experiments to the moon for NASA. The space agency paid $101 million for the delivery, plus $44 million for the science and tech on board. It’s the third mission under NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program, intended to ignite a lunar economy of competing private businesses while scouting around before astronauts show up later this decade.

Firefly’s Ray Allensworth said the lander skipped over hazards including boulders to land safely. Allensworth said the team continued to analyze the data to figure out the lander's exact position, but all indications suggest it landed within the 328-foot (100-meter) target zone in Mare Crisium.

The demos should get two weeks of run time, before lunar daytime ends and the lander shuts down.

It carried a vacuum to suck up moon dirt for analysis and a drill to measure temperature as deep as 10 feet (3 meters) below the surface. Also on board: a device for eliminating abrasive lunar dust — a scourge for NASA’s long-ago Apollo moonwalkers, who got it caked all over their spacesuits and equipment.

On its way to the moon, Blue Ghost beamed back exquisite pictures of the home planet. The lander continued to stun once in orbit around the moon, with detailed shots of the moon's gray pockmarked surface. At the same time, an on-board receiver tracked and acquired signals from the U.S. GPS and European Galileo constellations, an encouraging step forward in navigation for future explorers.

The landing set the stage for a fresh crush of visitors angling for a piece of lunar business.

Another lander — a tall and skinny 15-footer (4 meters tall) built and operated by Houston-based Intuitive Machines — is due to land on the moon Thursday. It’s aiming for the bottom of the moon, just 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the south pole. That’s closer to the pole than the company got last year with its first lander, which broke a leg and tipped over.

Despite the tumble, Intuitive Machines' lander put the U.S. back on the moon for the first time since NASA astronauts closed out the Apollo program in 1972.

A third lander from the Japanese company ispace is still three months from landing. It shared a rocket ride with Blue Ghost from Cape Canaveral on Jan. 15, taking a longer, windier route. Like Intuitive Machines, ispace is also attempting to land on the moon for the second time. Its first lander crashed in 2023.

The moon is littered with wreckage not only from ispace, but dozens of other failed attempts over the decades.

NASA wants to keep up a pace of two private lunar landers a year, realizing some missions will fail, said the space agency's top science officer Nicky Fox.

“It really does open up a whole new way for us to get more science to space and to the moon," Fox said.

Unlike NASA’s successful Apollo moon landings that had billions of dollars behind them and ace astronauts at the helm, private companies operate on a limited budget with robotic craft that must land on their own, said Firefly CEO Jason Kim.

Kim said everything went like clockwork.

“We got some moon dust on our boots," Kim said.

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Private lunar lander Blue Ghost after touching down on the moon with a special delivery for NASA Sunday, March 2, 2025. (NASA/Firefly Aerospace via AP)

Private lunar lander Blue Ghost after touching down on the moon with a special delivery for NASA Sunday, March 2, 2025. (NASA/Firefly Aerospace via AP)

Staff at the Mission Control outside Austin, Texas celebrating as lunar lander Blue Ghost touches down on the moon with a special delivery for NASA, Sunday, March 2, 2025. (NASA/Firefly Aerospace via AP)

Staff at the Mission Control outside Austin, Texas celebrating as lunar lander Blue Ghost touches down on the moon with a special delivery for NASA, Sunday, March 2, 2025. (NASA/Firefly Aerospace via AP)

In this rendering private lunar lander Blue Ghost touches down on the moon with a special delivery for NASA Sunday, March 2, 2025. (NASA/Firefly Aerospace via AP)