LAS VEGAS (AP) — Entertainer Flavor Flav was jailed Wednesday on felony and misdemeanor charges after arguing with his fiancee and threatening to attack her teenage son with a knife, police said.
The 53-year-old former rapper, hip-hop and reality television star, whose legal name is William Jonathan Drayton Jr., was arrested about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday at a home several miles southwest of the Las Vegas Strip, Las Vegas police Officer Bill Cassell said.
Patrol officers did not report that anyone was injured.
Drayton faces a felony assault with a deadly weapon charge carrying a possible penalty of up to six years in prison and a misdemeanor battery-domestic violence charge that could get him six months in county jail, according to jail records.
He was being held on $23,000 bail at Clark County jail pending an initial court appearance on Thursday. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.
Drayton, whose public persona includes wearing a big clock on his chest, was an original member of the politically and socially militant rap group Public Enemy in the 1980s and ’90s.
In recent years he has starred in several reality TV series and lent his name and recipes to short-lived chicken and soul food restaurants in Clinton, Iowa, and Las Vegas.
He has a criminal history that includes arrests and convictions on traffic infractions, a month in jail for assaulting his then-girlfriend in 1991, and three months in prison for shooting at a neighbor in 1993.
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