Maino claims he thwarted a robbery attempt at a Brooklyn sneaker store by taking matters into his own hands.
The rapper recently opened up about the 2006 incident during a conversation with DJ Vlad.
“Young dude ran in there, put the gun to my head, whatever,” Maino recalled. “Fought him, tussled with him, and all that. Wind up getting the gun. He wind up being shot twice.”
The 51-year-old rapper shared that he wasn’t charged for the shooting, though it wasn’t officially classified as self-defense. Maino explained that the gunman had an accomplice who couldn’t get inside because the store had a buzzer entry system. When Maino and the gunman started scuffling, people scattered from the store.
After shooting the would-be robber, Maino left the store to find police already on the scene. The officers immediately ordered him to the ground.
“The people out there like, ‘No that’s Maino. They came here, they tried robbing him,'” the “Let It Fly” artist said. “I never had to go to no court. I never got charged, nothing. [The gunman] was actually saying, ‘He shot me.'”
Maino suggested that police in inner cities “don’t really care.”
“Had this happened in a real neighborhood, and maybe a different complexion, I could have probably went to jail,” he said. “They didn’t really care because once they said that this guy was doing a robbery, and he got caught with a mask still on his face, didn’t matter.”
According to Maino, the gunman was later hit with attempted robbery charges, though he doesn’t know how the case turned out. The rapper refused to testify, and the police knew he wouldn’t cooperate. However, there were plenty of witnesses to the robbery who could take the stand.
