Gangsta rap impresario Marion “Suge” Knight was arrested Friday and booked on suspicion of murder for allegedly running over two men with his truck in Compton, killing one of them, and fleeing the scene.
Knight, 49, was being held in lieu of $2 million bail, Los Angeles County sheriff’s Deputy Trina Schrader said.
The hit-and-run occurred around 2:55 p.m. Thursday in the parking lot of Tam’s Burgers in the 1200 block of West Rosecrans Avenue, near Central Avenue. Knight allegedly drove his pickup truck backward and forward, killing Terry Carter, 55, and injuring 51-year-old Cle Stone, who was reportedly released after being treated at a hospital.
Knight’s attorney, James Blatt, confirmed his client was behind the wheel of the pickup that struck the men, but said he acted out of fear in trying to escape as many as four people who attacked him. He also claimed that Knight had been unaware that he had hit two men with the pickup, which was later found in a Westwood parking lot.
Lt. John Corina, a sheriff’s homicide detective, told reporters that investigators believe Knight intentionally struck the men and that he was not acting out of a reasonable fear.
Knight, accompanied by his attorney, arrived at the sheriff’s West Hollywood station in a black Mercedes-Benz around 12:45 this morning. He was placed under arrest around 3 a.m. after being questioned.
Corina told reporters that Knight had gotten into an argument at a film shoot for a promotional video for “Straight Out of Compton,” a biopic of the Compton rap group N.W.A. Knight, and was told to leave. The argument resumed about 20 minutes later at the eatery about three miles away.
Corina alleged the 51-year-old victim exchanged punches with Knight through the open window of his truck before the rapper intentionally ran him over, then struck Carter while accelerating forward.
“We are handling it as a homicide,” Corina told reporters at the scene.
Knight’s lawyer described Carter as a friend of his client’s, and Corina said the victim was not believed to have been involved in the altercation with Knight.
Knight is awaiting trial on a robbery charge stemming from the alleged theft of a camera from a paparazzo in Beverly Hills last September. He is charged in that case, along with comedian Micah “Katt” Williams, and faces up to 30 years to life in prison if convicted in the robbery case. Knight co-founded Death Row Records, which in its heyday in the early 1990s was generating revenues of about $100 million per year.
He helped launch some of rap’s biggest acts, including Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur, and was with Shakur the night he was slain in 1996.
Knight served five years in prison for assault and federal weapons violations and, after his release in 2001, spent another 10 months behind bars for violating parole by hitting a Hollywood nightclub valet.
He was shot a half-dozen times last August at a Los Angeles-area nightclub. No arrests have been made in that case.
—City News Service