Maino says he was almost robbed in a sneaker store in Brooklyn, New York, before he took the burglar down himself.
The rapper recently shared the story of the 2006 incident 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 revealed that he wasn’t charged in the shooting but that it also wasn’t viewed as self-defense. Maino said that the gunman had an accomplice with him who wasn’t able to get into the store because there was a buzzer to enter the store. Then, when Maino and the gunman started fighting, a bunch of people ran out.
After the gunman was shot, Maino exited the store, and the police were already there. The police ordered him to get down on 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 said that the 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.”
Maino said the gunman was later charged with attempted robbery, though the rapper doesn’t know the outcome of the trial. He wouldn’t testify, he said, and the police knew he wasn’t going to. But there were plenty of witnesses to the robbery who could testify.
