New Evidence, Eyewitnesses in Jonathan Majors Assault Case Appear to Tell a Different Story
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Just one day after Marvel star Jonathan Majors appeared in court to get the August 3 trial date for his assault case, new evidence appears to suggest a different version of events than previously believed.
Majors’ lawyer Priya Chaudhry has reportedly submitted “eyewitness interviews, phone records, credit-card statements, and hours of surveillance and police body-camera video” that all prove her clients innocence, as told to Insider. Her hope is that the misdemeanor assault charges get dropped now that they have this evidence, but if not, she and the Ant-Man star are prepared for trial.
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Evidence Breakdown: Eyewitness Testimonies
According to Chaudhry’s evidence, there are multiple witnesses who can attest that Majors never assaulted his now ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, including:
The driver of the car that took Majors and Jabbari from a Brooklyn bar the night of the alleged assault. He’s ready to testify that he never saw or heard Majors “raise a hand or voice” at Jabbari and that as Majors tried to get away from her—she pulled on and ripped his coat.
A small group of women who recognized the Creed III star during the altercation, hugged him, and took a selfie with him in the midst of it.
The bartender at Loosie’s Night Nightclub at the Moxy Hotel in Manhattan who “remembered Jabbari’s British accent and would testify that Jabbari was ‘having a great time’ and that he recalled no bleeding ear or bruised finger.” As previously reported by The Root, Jabbari and who we now know to be a three of the people who witnessed the altercation between she and Majors that night all went to Loosie’s later that evening. In different security camera footage, she can be seen using her allegedly injured right hand to “shuffle through her wallet for the credit card, handle her cell phone, hold a menu, clink Champagne glasses with her friends, write and hand a note to the DJ, give what appears to be a fist-pump into the air on the dance floor, and, finally, sign a check.”
The building handyman of their shared triplex penthouse, who accompanied Majors when he arrived hours later, to help unlock a walk-in closet doorwhere Jabbari was allegedly found “half-naked and passed out on the floor.”
An unidentified witness who was on the phone with Majors as he came back to his penthouse after spending the night at a hotel and found Jabbari in his closet.
Credit Card Statements
Per Chaudhry’s evidence, Jabbari charged rounds of shots and an $800 bottle of champagne to Majors’ card while at Loosies. After seeing a breakup text from the Magazine Dreams star, she also allegedly charged a taxi ride back to their shared triplex penthouse, where she arrived at 3:23 a.m. according to surveillance footage. (Insider also notes that after Majors sent the text, he allegedly turned his phone off. In response to it, Jabbari allegedly called Majors 32 times and sent several texts accusing him of infidelity.)
Surveillance Footage
According to Chaudhry, footage from the street corner where Majors allegedly got out of the car during the altercation, footage from Loosie’s Nightclub, footage from their shared penthouse, penthouse elevator footage all show that Jabbari was allegedly the aggressor who didn’t show any signs of a injury to her hand or ear before heading back to their penthouse. She argued that Jabbari instead “took a fall while alone in Majors’ penthouse apartment after drinking and taking sleeping pills.”
Police Bodycam Footage
Insider has more about the NYPD footage:
NYPD body-worn camera video turned over to Chaudhry by prosecutors shows a disoriented-seeming Jabbari telling cops and paramedics that she had drank to the point of throwing up in the bed and had taken several sleeping “tablets,” the defense lawyer said in the letter. Jabbari had no idea why her finger was bruised and her ear was bloody, Chaudhry said in the letter, instead telling first responders “I don’t know” 19 times.
“She also asks, ‘What happened to my finger?’ to one of the cops when she was alone with him,” Chaudhry told Insider, saying that the police body-camera footage showed Jabbari looking down at her hand as if discovering the injury for the first time. Chaudhry said in the letter that Jabbari also told the officers “that she started a fight in the car because she saw a text from another girl, wanted to see his phone, and tried to grab his phone.”
“But then the cops keep asking her if he hit her, punched her,” Chaudhry told Insider. At one point in the body-camera footage, the cop who would end up swearing out the original assault complaint can be seen on the video touching his own throat several times while questioning what Majors “did,” as if coaching her, Chaudhry alleges in the letter. But the police videos do not show any visible injury to Jabbari’s neck, the lawyer said.
As alleged in an April 8 letter to Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Rachel S. Pauley, Chaudhry maintained that Jabbari had no injuries to her right hand or ear as she previously claimed and pointed out numerous occasions throughout the night after the alleged assault where Jabarri frequently used her hand with no problem. Chadhry also said that she suspected that medical records showed no injury to Jabbari’s neck, hence why the allegation that Majors “put his hand on her neck, causing bruising and substantial pain” had removed in the complaint and the strangulation charge had been dropped.
As noted by Insider, Chaudhry also maintained her earlier claim of racism on the part of the officers, citing bodycam footage of their “impressed faces” and commentary of the triplex penthouse, the alleged “coaching” that one officer was allegedly seen on camera doing to Jabbari to get her to say he strangled her, and their alleged unwillingness to look into Majors’ claims that he was the one who was actually assaulted.
As previously reported by The Root, in the aftermath of these allegations, Majors was dropped by both his management and PR team; ad campaigns with the U.S. Army and MLB’s Texas Rangers; as well as several upcoming movies, including an Otis Redding biopic and the adaptation of Walter Mosley’s novel, The Man In My Basement. Perhaps most notably, he has not been dropped by Marvel Studios and there has been no word yet on whether or not he’ll be replaced as its newest supervillain, Kang the Conqueror. He also reportedly faces more abuse allegations from “multiple women,” according to Variety.
Of Majors’ uncertain career status, Chaudhry said: “He’s heartbroken. He’s watching his career dangle in the wind. He wants this to go to trial yesterday.”
To read the full report, head to insider.com.
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