Bronx rapper Remy Ma (government: Remy Smith) trial begins, she is charged with assault (orginally charged with attempted murder but ballistics show the gun was accidentally fired) for shooting her former friend, Makeda Joseph-Barnes, in the stomach in dispute over missing money. She is also charged with witness tampering after she allegedly ordered a group of male friends she was chilling with to assault the boyfriend and friend of a potential witness after spotting the pair in the same venue.

The NY Post shows a glimpse of the Prosecution’s opening statement:

March 11, 2008 — Remy Ma leveled her .45-caliber. She cocked the slide, loading a bullet. The silver gun glinted in the pre-dawn street light as the rapper stared down the girlfriend she thought had swiped her cash.

“I’m not playing,” she announced. “That’s my word. Dump your bag.”

A Manhattan prosecutor gave this cinematic description to jurors yesterday of last summer’s near-fatal Meatpacking District street shooting that left the 24-year-old victim with a slug through her torso.

“The defendant did not try to help the woman she had just shot,” assistant DA Jason Berland said in opening statements for the rapper’s assault trial. “Instead, she callously rummaged through [victim Makeda Barnes-Joseph’s] bag . . . and left her friend to die.”

But Remy Ma - whose real name is Remy Smith - suggested that Barnes-Joseph changed her story and started blaming the rapper for the shooting, meanwhile filing a $20 million suit and hiring a publicist.

“I mean, a publicist can really help you heal,” defense lawyer Ivan Fisher told the jurors sarcastically. “Lawyers really make you feel better.”

 If convicted Remy will be looking at the possibility of facing 25 years maximum behind bars.