Kanye West has been hit with a lawsuit by a photographer over an alleged phone-throwing incident.
Nichol Lechmanik is suing the rapper after he allegedly grabbed her cellphone and threw it onto the road whereas she filmed him exterior a sports activities academy in Newbury Park, California on 27 January.
In response to the grievance filed in Ventura County Superior Court docket on Wednesday, Lechmanik claimed that whereas she was in her automobile filming the rapper’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian, she observed him “angrily confronting” one other photographer on the road.
“Given defendant Ye’s popularity for violence in opposition to photographers, his historical past of bodily harming them, and primarily based on his threatening physique language, Plaintiff turned fearful for the photographer’s security,” the grievance reads, stories Billboard.
Lechmanik started to movie the incident on her cellphone from inside her automobile with the window open. The 45-year-old allegedly went as much as her automobile and “aggressively” mentioned, “You all ain’t gonna run up on me like that.” When she denied doing something, he allegedly turned “enraged” and “grabbed her cellphone out of her arms” earlier than throwing it “onto the road in direction of oncoming visitors”.
In response to the lawsuit, the photographer said that the incident brought on her “nice psychological, and emotional ache and struggling” and that she “anticipates incurring medical and associated bills”.
Lechmanik is suing Kanye, also called Ye, for assault, battery, negligence, and interference with the train of her civil rights over the alleged incident.
She is requesting normal and particular damages, punitive and exemplary damages, civil penalties and prices of the swimsuit.
She has moreover requested an order enjoining Kanye and “all individuals appearing in live performance with him or appearing on his behalf, from touching, placing, annoying, contacting, molesting, attacking, threatening, or in any other case interfering with…the plaintiff, and all individuals equally located, to pursue the occupation of photographer.”
Kanye has a protracted historical past of troubles with paparazzi. In 2008, he was arrested for breaking the flash of a photographer’s digital camera.