She added, “If you buy or find them unknowingly, the reward is the same.”
Jennifer McBride returned the dogs about 80 minutes after the star’s tweet, bringing two bags to the Los Angeles Police Department. Two months later, she was arrested and charged with kidnapping after police said she not only found the dogs but knew the father of one of the suspects. In December, she was found guilty of one count of receiving stolen property and sentenced to two years of probation, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
But McBride said she still needs to be paid to bring the dogs back. On Friday, she sued Lady Gaga in Los Angeles Superior Court, accusing the singer, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, of breach of contract and fraud. McBride alleges that Germanotta promised her half a million dollars in bad faith and that the singer used the reward as a quarter to lure McBride into coming forward and putting herself on the radar of law enforcement.
“This case is simple. Lady Gaga offered a reward. … She desperately wanted her dogs back and my client took steps to fulfill Lady Gaga’s wishes,” attorney KT Tran said in a statement to The Washington Post. “My client was not involved in the theft of the dogs. She loves dogs and is happy to participate in their safe return. She is legally entitled and deserves a reward.”
“The representation that they would pay the $500,000.00 reward ‘no questions asked’ was also false,” McBride added in the lawsuit.
Tran did not respond when asked to comment on a social media post, interview or speech in which Germanotta said she was offering the reward “no questions asked.”
A representative for Germanotta declined to comment on McBride’s allegations.
On February 24, 2021, Ryan Fischer was walking Lady Gaga’s trio on Hollywood Boulevard where three men drove a white sedan with him. Two of them came out and ambushed Fischer – who Germanotta described as “forever a hero” – he asks to give them dogs. When Fischer resisted, James Jackson shot him once with a .40 caliber handgun.
Jackson and his friends – Jaylin White and Lafayette Whaley – grabbed two of the three dogs, got into a car and fled. The third dog, Asia, escaped and was later picked up by security guard Germanotta. White and Whaley pleaded guilty to robbery in August and were sentenced to four years and six years, respectively, according to the district attorney’s office.
The three men did not know the dogs belonged to Lady Gaga, police said.
Fischer was seriously injured. Those include a gunshot to the chest, which caused doctors to remove part of his lung. He described the attack in December when Jackson, the man who shot him, was convicted of attempted murder and aggravated assault, according to the district attorney’s office. Jackson was sentenced to 21 years in prison.
“It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 2 years since I was taking Asia, Koji, and Gustav out for an evening tour when – all of a sudden – I suddenly found myself fighting with everything I had to protect these dogs from kidnapping,” Fischer. he wrote in a statement he posted on Instagram. “But it wasn’t enough: I was beaten, strangled, shot and left to die bleeding on the street gasping for my life. And Koji and Gustav left.
It was reported that Germanotta was in Italy working on a movie at the time.
The prosecutor who led the kidnapping and shooting case, Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney Michele Hanisee, told The Post that the three robbers took McBride “to be an innocent woman who she found the dogs.”
They set up a drop, which was captured on video, Hanisee said. As McBride was walking up and down a street in LA, someone in a Jeep pulled up, tied the dogs to a street light and took off. McBride immediately returned them, she added.
Police used surveillance footage from nearby businesses to trace the Jeep to a rental car location and a friend of Harold White, Jaylin White’s father and a longtime friend of McBride’s, Hanisee said. After retrieving them from a street lamp, McBride contacted Lady Gaga’s representatives, who instructed her to turn the dogs over to law enforcement at the nearest police station.
“Apparently everyone involved in the dog collection was connected to Harold White,” Hanisee said.
McBride originally faced two felony charges related to the kidnapping, but in a plea deal, prosecutors dropped one count of being an accessory after the fact.
In her suit, McBride said Lady Gaga made a “partial contract” by offering a $500,000 reward when she wanted her dogs back. McBride said she accepted the offer and “fulfilled her obligations under this contract when she returned the dogs.”
Now, McBride says in her suit, she wants Lady Gaga to do the same.
Meryl Kornfield and Andrew Jeong contributed to this report.
#woman #convicted #kidnapping #sued #Lady #Gaga