At 51 years of age, Maino has a lifetime of stories to tell and recently, he told the story of how back in 2006, he shot a would-be armed robber in a Brooklyn sneaker store.
The “All the Above” rapper publicly shared the story for the first time in an interview with DJ Vlad.
“I was In the sneaker store, a young dude ran in there, put the gun to my head, whatever. Fought him, tussled with him, and all that. Wind up getting the gun. He wind up being shot twice. Yeah, true story.”
The 51-year-old (real name Jermaine Coleman) revealed that he wasn’t charged in the shooting but that it also wasn’t viewed as self-defense since it happened inside a store. 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. “When he came to rob me, he wasn’t able to get in because they ran out and he wasn’t able to get inside the store,” he said.
Once Maino and the gunman started fighting, most of the people ran out of the store.
After the gunman was shot, Maino explained that he ran out of the store, and the police had arrived and initially ordered him to get down on the ground.
He states that he ran out and stated how the police were “like ‘get down on the floor’ before people started saying ‘that’s Maino, they tried to rob him’ and whatever.”
As for legal consequences, “I never had to go to no court. I never got charged, nothing,” Maino explained, despite the gunman’s claim that the rapper did shoot him.
Maino said that the incident shows how law enforcement in inner cities “don’t really care,” describing how had the incident happened in a different neighborhood or “a different complexion” than maybe the outcome would have been different.
“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, it didn’t matter,” he said, confirming that the gunman was charged with attempted robbery, although he declined to testify at the trial, saying that the store owners and other witnesses “took care of it,” before admitting that he didn’t know the outcome of the trial, referring to it as “dumb sh** that happens in the hood.”
He went on to further explain how he would have given his chain up because it “wasn’t worth his life” and says he may have handled the situation differently now that he is more mature.
This was not Maino’s only possible involvement in a shooting. In 2016, he was cleared for any involvement with a shooting at NYC’s Irving Plaza before a T.I. concert.