Suge Knight wanted over fatal hit-and-run in Los Angeles

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/30/suge-knight-in-fatal-hit-and-run

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Police in Los Angeles were hunting the rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight on suspicion of homicide for running over at least two men, killing one of them, following a fight on a film set.

The Death Row Records founder drove his truck over the men in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant on Thursday afternoon, police and witnesses said, shortly after an argument broke out on the set of a biopic about the rap group NWA.

Knight’s lawyer, James Blatt, told reporters it was an accident and the 49-year-old planned to turn himself in. Police said some witnesses described the running over as deliberate and it was being treated as homicide.

Knight’s truck was found abandoned in a parking lot in Westwood about 20 miles north of Compton, a largely African American and Latino neighbourhood where the incident happened. Knight’s whereabouts were not immediately known.

The LA county sheriff’s department issued a bulletin warning all southern California law enforcement to “be on the lookout” for Knight, considered armed and dangerous and wanted for questioning for murder, the entertainment news site TMZ.com reported.

Knight co-founded Death Row Records with Dr Dre in 1991 and built it into a pioneering rap label that for a time dominated the genre.

Despite his commercial and critical success Knight’s life has seemed to reflect the violence depicted in many rap lyrics. He was at the wheel of a BMW in Las Vegas in 1996 when gunmen in another vehicle shot his passenger, the rapper Tupac Shakur. Shakur died a week later.

Knight has spent the past two decades alternating between jail, for various assaults and parole violations, and Malibu, where he had a mansion, and Hollywood, where he inhabited a dark celebrity twilight. Last year a gunman shot him six times at a nightclub during a pre-awards party hosted by the singer Chris Brown.

It is unclear what prompted the sequence of events at Compton on Thursday. A film crew was shooting a biographical drama film, Straight Outta Compton, based on the NWA album of the same name that went platinum in 1988.

The film depicts the rise and fall of the group, which included Eazy-E, Dr Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren and DJ Yella. Critics said their lyrics glorified misogyny and cop killing. Fans said they captured the rage and alienation of a forgotten underclass. The film is due for release later this year.

An initial confrontation began around 3pm when Knight and two unidentified men started arguing on the set, Lieutenant John Corina of the LA county sheriff’s department told reporters.

About 20 minutes later the two men visited nearby Tam’s Burgers where Knight allegedly followed and ran them over in the parking lot, Corina said.

“Looks like he drove backwards and struck the victims and drove forwards and struck them again. The people we talked to say it looked like it was an intentional act,” he said.

Corina continued: “They obviously knew each other. They got into some kind of verbal altercation and it escalated … we are handling it like a homicide.”

According to several local media accounts the argument began when the film’s security guards asked Knight to leave.

Blatt, Knight’s lawyer, said his client, still recovering from last year’s gunshot wounds, was in fragile health and had acted in self-defence. “He was in the process of being physically assaulted by two men and in an effort to escape he unfortunately hit two [other] individuals. He was in his car trying to escape.” The lawyer said he expected his client would be “totally exonerated”.

TMZ said the 55-year-old dead man, which it named, was a friend of Knight, had arrived with him at the scene and was walking to the passenger door of Knight’s vehicle when the rap mogul hit the accelerator.

It said two other men were injured, including Cle “Bone” Sloane, who appeared in the films Training Day and End of Watch. They were being treated at hospital for injuries said to be non-life threatening.

It was the latest in a long line of Knight’s run-ins with the law. In 1997 he was sentenced to nine years in jail for violating probation terms from an earlier assault case. He was released in 2001 only to return to jail two years later for violating parole by assaulting a parking-lot attendant. He filed for bankruptcy in 2006 and sold his Malibu mansion. In 2009 he pleaded guilty to misdemeanour battery.

Compton, a sprawl of low-rise, mostly poor housing, was originally a white suburb. Middle-class African Americans moved in from the 1940s and whites began to move out. Venus and Serena Williams grew up in Compton hitting tennis balls on concrete courts. Many middle-class black people left after the 1992 Rodney King riots, branding it a ghetto.

Related: Aja Brown, Compton's new mayor: 'I see it as a new Brooklyn'

The murder rate has halved since 2000 but Compton’s violent crime rate remains more than twice the US average. It is now two-thirds Latino.

The mayor, Aja Brown, talked up Comption as LA’s answer to Brooklyin in a 2013 interview with the Guardian.