2 Chainz has steadfastly denied that he was robbed of his namesake jewelry at gunpoint in San Francisco last weekend. But on Thursday, the MC’s bodyguard, Harold “Hammer Strength” Folsom, called in to a Columbus, Ohio, radio station and described for the first time exactly what happened during the daring daylight chase and grab.
“All of a sudden three dudes just jumped out with huge guns, .357 Magnums,” Folsom said in the interview, which has since been taken down from Power 107.5’s website. (A spokesperson for the station confirmed to MTV News that the interview took place and that Folsom is part of Chainz’s crew; a spokesperson for the rapper could not be reached for comment at press time.)
“They pointed the guns at us and we was like ‘Whoa!’ We thought it was a joke for a minute. We looked at them, we stopped, kinda paused. We thought it was a joke. Then all we heard was, ‘2 Chainz give it up.’ So we like stood there and didn’t do anything, and we kinda like froze, cuz we wanted to see if this was real. All of a sudden, the next thing you know, 2 Chainz kinda like backed up a little bit. And then he said, ‘Give it up. Give it up.’ And then all of a sudden he took off. He took off running first. When he took off running, we took off running. Then all of a sudden these dudes, they just start shooting. I don’t know where they shot at.”
A surveillance video posted by TMZ corroborated Folsom’s story, showing someone pulling a gun on Chainz and his crew. In the grainy clip, Chainz and his partners are walking down the street when two men approach them with guns drawn. The rapper and his people take off in different directions when they see the guns, with the purported robbers in hot pursuit, including one who skips down the street as he chases the Chainz posse.
Folsom said the attempted jacking came around 4:30 p.m., as the group came out of their van and were on their way to a store in downtown San Francisco. He also said the reports about the incident were way off. “TMZ got it all like we just left and left him standing there, and we just took off,” said Folsom, who told the station that he never left Chainz’s side during the robbery. “But he started running first, and we took off after he took off. So I don’t know what they trying to make it seem like. The bottom line is he just fell, the dude he grabbed his wallet from him, and his cell phone from him, and that’s all they took. He has his chains on him, his bracelet and all that, and all his jewelry with him and they ain’t touch none of that.”
For the record, Folsom said Chainz didn’t have any money in his wallet and, as far as he’s concerned the whole thing was a set up. “We know it was a setup so, that’s why he told the police we will handle it,” he said.
Chainz tweeted that nothing was taken from him in the incident, but his luck seemed to run out on Tuesday, when police arrested him at Los Angeles International Airport and charged him with felony narcotics possession after finding a bottle of promethazine and codeine syrup in his luggage.
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