The hip-hop mogul Marion “Suge” Knight was formally arrested on a murder charge on Friday, after a fatal hit-and-run incident in Los Angeles. Bail was set at $2m.
Sergeant Diane Hecht of the Los Angeles county sheriff’s information office said Knight was arrested at about 3am after turning himself in early on Friday.
Police and witnesses said Knight, 49, the founder of Death Row Records, drove his truck over two men in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant in Compton on Thursday afternoon. One died, and another was injured. Knight’s attorney said it was an accident and he was fleeing attackers.
#BREAKINGNEWS: Suge Knight has arrived at Sheriff's West Hollywood Station, following deadly hit & run in Compton. pic.twitter.com/AukImJPtfj
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) January 30, 2015
It is unclear what prompted the sequence of events in 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.
An initial confrontation began around 3pm when Knight and two unidentified men started arguing on the set, according to Lieutenant John Corina of the LA County sheriff’s department. 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.
Some witnesses described the incident as deliberate, and police said it was being treated as a homicide.
Knight’s truck was later found abandoned in a car park in Westwood about 20 miles (32km) north of Compton, a largely black and Latino neighbourhood where the incident happened.
He 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 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 living in Malibu, where he had a mansion, and Hollywood, where he inhabited a celebrity twilight. Last year, a gunman shot him six times at a nightclub during a pre-awards party hosted by the singer Chris Brown.
The Associated Press in Los Angeles contributed to this report