NEW YORK - Grammy-nominated rapper
50 Cent is being sued by a former girlfriend who says the hip-hop superstar is trying to evict her and their 10-year-old son from their multimillion-dollar home.
The single-page notice filed by Shaniqua Tompkins accuses
50 Cent of breach of contract and unjust enrichment. Her lawyer says this means he broke a promise to give Tompkins and son Marquise a home.
"This was a house that was promised to Shaniqua up until the closing," said Tompkins' lawyer Paul Catsandonis. "Then he decided not to put it in her name. Now he's trying to put her out of the house. This would mean evicting his own son."
The rapper's lawyer, Bret Kimmel, did not immediately return calls for comment Thursday.
Catsandonis said the 32-year-old rapper, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, paid about $2.4 million for the house, one of the largest in the Long Island neighborhood of Dix Hills. He said
50 Cent, who was shot outside his grandmother's Queens home in 2000, had told Tompkins, 32, he wanted her and their son in a safe and secure place.
"This is somebody who was with him when he was shot and who nursed him back to health," Catsandonis said, adding that Tompkins met the rapper when she was 15. "I think what he's doing is horrible."
The rapper was sitting in a friend's car when he was shot on May 24, 2000. Bullets hit him in the hand, arm, hip, legs, chest and face, and he spent 13 days in a hospital.
The shooter reportedly was killed three weeks later.
Tompkins' lawsuit was filed Wednesday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. It asks the court to declare that she has a right to live in the house. She already gets court-ordered financial support from
50 Cent for their son.
The rapper has been nominated for 13 Grammys, including nods for the song "In da Club" and the album "Get Rich or Die Tryin'." In 2005, he starred with Terrence Howard in a semi-autobiographical movie based on that album.
He also starred in the 2006 film "Home of the Brave" as a soldier returning home from the Iraq War.
Source: AP
