Weezer bassist Scott Shriner‘s estranged wife, Jillian Lauren, has revealed that her “world fell to pieces” after being shot by police in Los Angeles in April.
“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, 52, told Rolling Stone in an interview published on Saturday, December 20.
Lauren was arrested for attempted murder in Los Angeles in April after a tense standoff with police. LAPD officers were in the area investigating a hit-and-run suspect from the previous day.
According to police, officers witnessed Lauren allegedly “armed with a handgun” outside a “neighboring residence,” leading to a showdown in the backyard.
“The officers ordered [Lauren] to drop the handgun numerous times. However, she refused,” the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement at the time. “[Lauren] then pointed the handgun at the officers and an officer-involved shooting occurred.”
Lauren allegedly ran into the home after being shot in the arm, with police later recovering a 9-millimeter handgun from the property. The author was arrested for attempted murder and eventually released from custody on a $1 million bond.
The Everything You Ever Wanted writer has now told Rolling Stone that she spent her time in a holding cell memorizing 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 remembered. “In the throes of it, I was saying I will never do a book about this because I can’t experience this again.”
Prosecutors eventually decided to charge Lauren with negligent discharge of a firearm and assault with a semiautomatic weapon.
Lauren pleaded not guilty but later agreed to undergo a two-year mental health diversion program. At the time, her lawyer Hilary Potashner publicly thanked the district attorney for “carefully reviewing this matter” and settling on a “fair” solution.
Looking back on the ordeal, the Some Girls: My Life in a Harem author said that she agreed to enter a diversion program “to protect [her] family.”
“When the headlines came out, my joke was, ‘I’m not just a gun-toting criminal, now I’m a crazy one,’” she joked. “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 … I’m in a position where I can speak to it.’”
Shriner, 60, told TMZ shortly after his wife’s arrest that the couple were “alright” despite going through “a tough time.”
Scott Shriner and his wife, writer Jillian Lauren, in 2015. Ethan Miller/Getty Images
However, Us Weekly reported on December 2 that Lauren filed for divorce from Shriner after 20 years of marriage, citing “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for the split.
Lauren admitted to Rolling Stone that the media coverage of her divorce was actually more traumatizing than “headlines” about her arrest.
“The headlines about the divorce were the ones that really hurt me,” she said. “I was the one who served my husband, but still, to see it in the public was really painful. It was definitely a day [spent] under the covers, blocking out all the noise. Divorce is painful, I don’t care who you are.”
As for where the estranged couple stand now, Lauren explained to the publication that Shriner is “still [her] best friend” but they “grew apart” as a couple.
“We still have beautiful kids together and have always really supported each other in our various transformations,” she added.
Us has reached out to Shriner for comment.
Shriner and Lauren got married in November 2005 and later adopted Tariku in 2007 and Jovanni in 2009.
