NEW YORK (AP) — The woman who accused Jonathan Majors of assaulting her in the backseat of a car broke down multiple times on the witness stand Thursday as the actor’s attorney repeatedly played a surveillance video that showed Majors lifting her up and thrusting her into the vehicle.
“I really don’t want to watch it again,” Grace Jabbari said through tears, as Majors looked impassively on from his seat nearby. “This is going to make me sick.”
The video capped off the fourth and most emotionally charged day of the trial against Majors, a budding Hollywood star who was arrested in March for allegedly assaulting Jabbari, his girlfriend of two years, in the backseat of a chauffeured car.
Prosecutors say the 34-year-old actor struck her on the side of the head and fractured her middle finger during a dispute that began when she read a romantic text on his phone sent by another woman. After the driver pulled over and the pair got out, Majors picked her up and threw her “like a football” back into the car, according to prosecutors.
On Thursday, attorneys for Majors played zoomed-in footage of the shoving incident for the first time, arguing that it undermined Jabbari’s testimony that her head slammed into the doorframe when she was thrown back into the car.
“There were multiple pushes, multiple injuries,” Jabbari replied. She has accused Majors of having a “violent temper” that culminated in her assault in the backseat of a moving car, an incident that was not captured on video.
Defense attorneys also played surveillance footage from a Manhattan night club that aimed to cast doubt on Jabbari’s claims she suffered “excruciating” pain and injuries during the alleged assault.
File/Jonathan Majors and guest Grace Jabbari attend the “Devotion” Premiere at Cinesphere on September 12, 2022 in Toronto, Ontario. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)
The grainy footage showed Jabbari in the hours after the incident dancing and drinking with a group of three strangers who she said offered to help after finding her distraught and without her phone on the streets of Manhattan.
Not wanting to be alone, Jabbari said she accompanied the group to a nightclub called Loosie’s, where she ordered a bottle of champagne and a round of shots with her new friends.
As she played a compilation of video clips from inside the club, an attorney for Majors peppered the accuser with questions about how she was able to use her injured hand for tasks like lifting a champagne glass, rifling through her bag, or brushing locks of hair behind her ear.
“I wasn’t focusing on pain. I was just trying to have a nice time,” Jabbari replied. “There were these lovely people there and I felt safe with them.”
It was only once she got up the next morning that she felt “like I got hit by a bus,” Jabbari testified. She was roused from her sleep by police officers who were called by Majors to break into the locked bedroom.
In body-camera footage played Thursday, Jabbari can be heard telling the officers that she and Majors had gotten in a fight but that she couldn’t remember the cause of her injuries.
She didn’t go into detail with the officers, she said, “because I was trying to protect him.”
Majors was arrested while Jabbari was treated for minor injuries at a local hospital.
“Things started coming back to me when I calmed down and allowed myself to not worry about him,” she said. “When I realized I escaped the situation”
Jabbari is expected to return to the witness stand for her final day of testimony on Friday.
