Rapper Suspected in Vibe Awards Violence

By Susan Reines
Staff Writer

November 17 -- Rapper Young Buck is one of three suspects in a stabbing that occurred Monday at a hip-hop music awards ceremony at a Santa Monica Airport hangar, police said Tuesday.

A videotape of the violence at the Vibe Awards shows David Darnell Brown, a.k.a. Young Buck, waving a knife at an apparent fan who punched Andre Young, a rap artist who goes by the name Dr. Dre.

Young -- one of the producers on Brown’s August solo debut -- was about to receive a lifetime achievement award when he was punched by a man who seemed to be asking for an autograph.

The video of the incident shows three men with knives, one of them Brown, in the midst of the melee that followed the blow to Young. Dre, police said. In the video, Brown is shown lunging at Young’s attacker, identified Monday as 26-year-old parolee Jimmy James Johnson of Los Angeles.

Johnson was hospitalized with a serious stab wound to the upper body and is said to be in stable condition.

Police officials said at a Tuesday afternoon press conference that there was no evidence of a rumor that Young had a restraining order against Johnson, and Chief James T. Butts Jr. said he did not know if Johnson’s attendance at the event violated the conditions of his parole.

Brown, a Nashville native, fled the scene and was not identified until the police reviewed the tape Tuesday.

The two other armed men in the videotape have not yet been identified, Butts said. Interviews of the hundreds of witnesses are “going on around the clock,” he said.

Asked why it took the police three minutes to respond to the outbreak of violence, Butts said, “There were 15 officers already on the scene, but it’s a pretty large venue, so it took a couple minutes to get on the scene.”