Weezer bassist’s ex-wife Jillian Lauren, breaks silence on shooting incident and divorce: I was doing the best I knew to protect my family”

Jillian Lauren-Shriner, the ex-wife of Weezer bassist Scott Shriner, has broken her silence on her shooting case involving LAPD officers and her divorce. Lauren-Shriner, who is a best-selling author who publishes under the pen name Jillian Lauren, made headlines earlier this spring when she was taken into custody on April 8 after sustaining a non-life-threatening gunshot wound from a police officer . The LAPD later said that officers had been pursuing an unrelated hit-and-run car chase, when one of the suspects tried to enter Shriner’s property. There, the author allegedly fired at the suspect and then pointed her gun at officers and refused to lower it when asked. Lauren was shot in the shoulder by a member of the police, and taken into hospital and then into custody. In May, she pleaded not guilty to the charges , and in September, a judge granted a mental health diversion to her , meaning that she avoided jail time for the incident. Now, she’s given her first interview since the incident. “I was doing the best I knew to protect my family,” she told Rolling Stone . “[The] impulse was self-defense.” Per the publication, Lauren explained that she can’t discuss certain aspects of the case. She is currently enrolled in a two-year mental health diversion program that is expected to lead to full dismissal of her charges, but technically, her case is still pending. “My world fell to pieces around me in a heartbeat,” she said of the aftermath of the incident. “It’s like, you spend your whole life just getting an entire deck of cards in order. And just take them and throw them up in the air one day, and I’m still waiting to see how they’re gonna land.” Lauren recalled being arrested and taken to jail while newspaper headlines said she was booked on suspicion of attempted murder. She said that while inside her cell, she tried to memorise the graffiti on the walls. “It gave me a chance to get out of my head for those hours in the jail cell and imagine who else had been there,” she explained. “In the throes of it, I was saying I will never do a book about this because I can’t experience this again.” However, she adds that she now feels differently. “Books are what I do.” After Lauren pleaded not guilty, a judge found her eligible for the mental health diversion program, which requires counselling and random drug and alcohol testing. “When the [mental health diversion] headlines came out, my joke was, ‘I’m not just a gun-toting criminal, now I’m a crazy one’. “My PTSD is a very real thing. I’m a victim of sex trafficking and domestic violence. ... When the headlines said ‘Mental Health Diversion,’ what I really thought was, ‘OK, good. People are so scared to talk about this.’” She continued: “I’m in a position where I can speak to it.” Earlier this month, the couple announced they would be getting a divorce after two decades...

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