Kanye West Hit With Assault Lawsuit by Photographer Over Alleged Phone-Throwing Incident

A paparazzo is suing Kanye West over an alleged incident in which the rapper grabbed her phone and threw it into traffic, according to court documents obtained by Billboard.

Photographer Nichol Lechmanik is suing West (sometimes known as Ye) for assault, battery, negligence and interference with the exercise of her civil rights following the alleged altercation, which occurred on the afternoon of Jan. 27 outside Sports Academy in Newbury Park, Calif., per the complaint filed in California Superior Court in Ventura County on Wednesday (May 31).

Lechmanik alleges that while driving her car and filming Ye’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian as she exited the facility, she noticed that West was “angrily confronting” another photographer on the street outside. “Given Defendant Ye’s reputation for violence against photographers, his history of physically harming them, and based on his threatening body language, Plaintiff became fearful for the photographer’s safety,” the complaint reads. It states that Lechmanik then began filming the incident on her phone from inside her car with the window open.

Lechmanik alleges that Ye then walked up to her car and “aggressively” said, “You all ain’t gonna run up on me like that,” and when she replied that she wasn’t, he became “enraged,” reached into her car and “ripped her phone out of her hands” before throwing it “onto the street towards oncoming traffic.”

According to the lawsuit, Lechmanik said the incident caused her “great mental, and emotional pain and suffering” and that she “anticipates incurring medical and related expenses.”

Lechmanik is requesting general and special damages, punitive and exemplary damages, civil penalties and costs of the suit. Additionally, she’s asking for an order enjoining West and “all persons acting in concert with him or acting on his behalf, from touching, striking, annoying, contacting, molesting, attacking, threatening, or otherwise interfering with…the Plaintiff, and all persons similarly situated, to pursue the occupation of photographer.”

West has a long history of legal scuffles with paparazzi that stem all the way back to 2008 when he was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport after breaking the flash of a paparazzo’s camera.