Kim Kardashian tells Paris court she thought she was ‘going to die’ in 2016 jewel heist
Reality TV star Kim Kardashian told a court in Paris of her shock and fear as she thought she would be raped and killed during a 2016 heist in which she was robbed at gunpoint in her hotel room by a gang who stole jewels worth millions.
Kardashian, dressed in a smart black outfit and wearing shiny jewellery, arrived in court in a black van minutes earlier, accompanied by her mother. Cameras are not allowed in the courtroom, and her testimony is not broadcast live.
“I absolutely thought I was going to die,” she told the court. “I thought about my sister, thought she would walk in and see me shot dead and have that memory in her forever.”
Kardashian cried as she recalled the start of the attack, in which the suspects, dressed in police uniforms, are accused of tying her up with zip ties and duct tape before making off with jewellery, including a $4 million engagement ring given to her by her then-husband rapper Kanye West (now known as Ye).
“We were leaving the next morning so I was just packing up, it was around 3 in the morning. I heard stomping up the stairs when I was in bed,” she said.
“And in my bedroom comes in a few police officers, or that I assumed were police officers as they were in police uniforms.”
“Then I heard one of the gentlemen forcefully say ‘ring! ring!’ in English, with an accent, pointing,” she said.
“I was pretty hysterical and I just looked at the concierge and told him what is going to happen to us, I have to make it home to my babies,” Kardashian said.
She said at one point she feared she was going to be raped as the robbers threw her on the bed and one of them grabbed her leg. “But he ended up tying me up and closed my legs,” she said.
Kardashian said the intruders did not hit her.
“I was grabbed, and dragged into the other room, and thrown onto the floor, but wasn’t hit, no,” she said.
SECURITY
The attack changed a lot of things, she said, including prompting her to increase her security.
“It changed the way that I feel safe at home. Now I have between four and six security at home for me to feel safe,” she said. “I can’t sleep at night if there aren’t multiple security people.”
Ahead of Kardashian’s testimony, her stylist Simone Harouche, who was asleep in the same luxury hotel flat at the time of the attack, told the tribunal of the “terror” they both felt during the robbery.
Harouche rushed to lock herself in the bathroom and texted Kardashian’s sister Kourtney and their bodyguard for help.
When the robbers left and Kardashian joined her downstairs, “she was beside herself, I’ve never seen her like that before,” Harouche said. “She just was screaming and kept saying we need to get out of here, we need help, what are we going to do if they come back.”
Harouche also cried at times during her testimony, and said she had changed careers and underwent therapy because of the robbery, which she said caused her post-traumatic stress and made her fearful of being around celebrities.
In all, nine men and one woman are being tried by the criminal court. Five of them – all men – face armed robbery and kidnapping charges and potentially risk being sentenced to life imprisonment. The others are charged with complicity in the heist or the unauthorised possession of a weapon.
As the robbers escaped on foot or with bicycles, they lost some of the jewellery, including a cross with six diamonds, which a passerby found in the street and brought to the police. But most of the jewels, including the $4 million engagement ring, were never found.
Fans of Kardashian queued up early on Tuesday to get a chance to get a seat in the courtroom.
“We came to show our support for Kim Kardashian because she’s someone we’ve followed since we were very young,” social media influencer Leo Saint-Charles said.
“She inspires us a lot, and we’re here to support her in this trial, which was very traumatic for her. And there you have it, we hope justice will be done, right?”
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