Takeoff in 2017. Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Hangout Music Festival.
Patrick Gregory Clarke — the 34-year-old man arrested on December 2, 2022 in connection with Takeoff’s November 1 murder and formally charged with the crime on May 25 of this year — maintained his innocence in a court hearing on Thursday (October 26), Rolling Stone reports. Clark has been on house arrest since January.
Per the magazine, Clark’s attorney Letitia Quinones-Hollins claimed in court Thursday that her client did not fire the bullets that hit the Migos member in the head and torso on the night in question in front of 810 Billiards & Bowling in downtown Houston. She said the video and ballistic evidence investigators used to determine that Clark was the shooter would not hold up as conclusive in trial. She also said her client had a “valid self-defense claim,” though it’s not entirely clear how both of these things could be true at once. (The FADER has reached out for clarification and further comment.)
“There was someone else who started the shooting, it was not Patrick Clark,” she told Rolling Stone. “He was in the same position that Takeoff was in, he was trying to get out of there alive as well. He didn’t have anything to do with the argument that occurred. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when people started firing weapons.” She added that her client’s trial would probably start no sooner than July 2024, with his next hearing scheduled for January 23.
