Jillian Lauren, the wife of Weezer bassist Scott Shriner, is making headlines following a confrontation with Los Angeles police.
Lauren, 51, was shot and injured by police in April 2025, after pointing a handgun at officers from the front yard of her home in LA’s Eagle Rock neighborhood, the LAPD said in a statement. The officers encountered Lauren while they were pursuing three suspects from a misdemeanor hit-and-run. They ordered her to drop the gun many times, but she refused and pointed it at them, the police claim.
The LAPD did not say if Lauren fired the gun, but stated that she was struck by gunfire and fled into her house. She was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and taken to a hospital and treated for a “non-threatening gunshot wound.”
Authorities later determined that Lauren was not involved in the hit-and-run. As of Wednesday, April 9, one suspect connected to it was detained by California Highway Patrol. Two remained at large.
A nine-millimeter handgun was retrieved from Lauren and Shriner’s home. (Us Weekly reached out to the couple for comment.)
The incident arose several days prior to Shriner, 59, taking the stage at Coachella. Weezer, which also consists of Rivers Cuomo, Patrick Wilson and Brian Bell, were added to the music festival’s April 2025 lineup last minute alongside Ed Sheeran.
Keep scrolling for everything to know about Jillian Lauren:
1. She Dropped Out of NYU and Became a Stripper
Lauren grew up in New Jersey and briefly studied acting at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. However, she left college after six months and took up stripping in Time Square, according to the New York Post.
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2. She Was a Call Girl for the Prince of Brunei
Lauren detailed her experience with Prince Jefri Bolkiah in her 2010 memoir Some Girls: My Life in a Harem. After meeting Bolkiah, Lauren told her parents that she had landed an acting job. She traveled to Brunei and joined the royal’s harem alongside dozens of other young women. Eventually, she left the prince and returned to the United States.
3. She’s a Mother of Two
Parents Shriner and Lauren in 2011. Jason LaVeris
Lauren married Shriner in November 2005. The couple share two sons, Tariku and Jovanni, whom they adopted in 2007 and 2009, respectively.
She previously opened up about her fertility struggles and becoming a parent following her colorful past.
“On paper, I might not be considered the best candidate for motherhood,” she said on the Motherhood Later blog in 2015. “My husband Scott and I had a long and circuitous road to parenting, including the whole painful infertility thing. We eventually found the right path for us and adopted our son [Tariku] from Ethiopia.”
She added at the time, “In our early years of parenting, I put a lot of pressure on myself to be very, very good, in order to make up for my scandalous past. This was supposed to be my redemption story. What I found instead is that being a good mother wasn’t so much about transcending my past but rather about drawing from my entire range of experiences and learning to embrace the imperfections.”
4. She Wrote a True Crime Book
Shriner and Lauren at a PEN America event in 2018. (Photo by Gregg DeGuire/WireImage)
Lauren is the author of the nonfiction bestseller Behold the Monster: Confronting America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, which was published in 2023. She spent hundreds of hours with serial killer Sam Little as part of her research. Her interviews with Little were the subject of a true-crime docuseries that aired on Starz in 2021.
5. She Has Been a Foster Care Advocate
The LA-based Lauren and Shriner have both supported foster care organizations including Raise a Child, a nonprofit based in California. The couple appeared in a promotional video in 2018 to tell the story of expanding their family with son Jovanni. “You couldn’t make a better family,” Shriner gushed in the video. “We’re all so meant to be together. It’s just undeniable.”
