Former Death Row Records CEO Marion ‘Suge’ Knight (Suge short for Sugar), has been arrested by police in Los Angeles on suspicion of murder in connection with a fatal hit-and-run incident near the set of the upcoming N.W.A. biopic, Straight Outta Compton. Knight’s bail has been set at US$2 million.
According to several reports, Knight pulled up to the Compton set of the F. Gary Gray-directed film and got into an altercation with two men. He then got into his vehicle and ran over a man while reversing — said to be his own friend, who later died — and fled the scene. Police found Knight’s truck not long after the incident took place, and the former record mogul later turned himself in to authorities, who formally arrested him on murder charges.
According to a source close to rapper and Straight Outta Compton producer Ice Cube, production had wrapped for the day and neither Cube nor Dr. Dre (who is also a producer on the film) were on the set at the time of the altercation.
The victim has been identified as Terry Carter, described as a friend of Knight’s who arrived with him on the scene. Eyewitness reports say that Carter was in the midst of walking to the passenger door of Knight’s truck but was in the rear when Knight gunned the engine, and was run down. Two other men were hit — believed to be the men Knight had been fighting with — and suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
Sources tell gossip site TMZ that police don’t believe Knight was trying to run over and kill Carter, but they do believe that he was trying to run over one of the other victims, which is enough to charge him. In California and many other U.S. states, if a person is in the process of committing a felony and accidentally kills someone in the process, that person can be charged with murder.
Knight’s lawyer said before his arrest that his client’s health was frail and he was in fear for his life at the time, having recently been shot several times and then later almost dying from a blood clot following a collapse in prison.
Knight has long been a seeming magnet for various legal troubles and controversies, but an incident of this magnitude could very well be the last stop on the chaotic roller-coaster that has been his life up to now. We’ll bring you more on this story as it develops.
