Rapper Freaky Zeeky took the stand in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday to testify against a man accused of killing his friend and shooting and robbing him after a traffic accident last year.

The rapper whose real name is Ezekiel Jiles, 28, said he had performed at Jimmy's Café in the Bronx on April 24, 2003, and gone downtown to a nightclub when his car was hit from behind on 21st Street about 2:30 a.m.

"I felt the car shake," Jiles told jurors in State Supreme Court. "After a while, I checked to see what kind of dent it was." Jiles said he felt nervous because "that day I lost a friend of mine," and just talking about it was "bringing back a lot of memories."

Chauncey Dillon, 30, of Brooklyn, is accused with two others of killing Eric Mangrum, 28, of Hempstead, one of Jiles'' companions, and attempting to rob the rapper at gunpoint of a diamond and gold medallion around his neck.

Recalling the fender bender, Jiles said he didn''t want police called, and he told the men in the other car to "take it around the corner." He said he walked around the corner, signed an autograph on the way, and four men got out of the other car.

"I was like, ''Ooh, where's the money? Let's get this situation resolved,''" he testified. "Next thing I know I was fighting for my life, and I got shot."

As prosecutor Charles Curlett struggled to get Jiles to recall the details, the rapper said that as soon as one of the men pulled out a weapon, he grabbed the gunman's wrist and pulled him into a "full-Nelson."

"I was holding him in a tight grip, as a shield so I wouldn''t get hit," he testified.

Still, he got shot on the left side, he said, "by somebody wearing green."

Dillon was apparently wearing a green flight jacket the night of the shooting.

Jiles described feeling his medallion being pulled over his head. He said he grabbed the chain and got hit with the butt of a gun and then, as he stood up after a fall, he got hit by a car.

Jurors saw some of the action that was captured on a surveillance tape.

On cross-examiniation, defense lawyer James McQueeney tried to show that Jiles was impaired the night of the incident, and got him to admit he drank a small bottle of Cristal champagne that night. "I was nice," the rapper testified.

Jiles also admitted that he told a 13th Precinct detective that the "tablecloth dude" -- not the man in green -- had shot him.

Jiles, of East Harlem, who has spent more time on the other side of a witness stand, said home is now Riker's Island, and that he is serving some 3 years behind bars on a North Carolina drug conviction. He also said rape charges against him in 1995 and 1996 had been dismissed, and that he had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault in October 1996 after beating up a friend who had overstayed his welcome.

 

Source: NYNewsday