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| FILE - This Oct. 17, 2012, file photo, provided by the Las Vegas Police Department shows rapper Flavor Flav, whose name is William Jonathan Drayton Jr., in a police booking photo in Las Vegas. A judge in Las Vegas is expected to hear evidence in a felony case Wednesday, April 10, 2013, alleging entertainer Flavor Flav attacked his longtime girlfriend and her teenage son last October. |
LAS VEGAS
(AP) -- Entertainer Flavor Flav is facing a trial on felony charges that
he threatened his longtime girlfriend's 17-year-old son with a butcher
knife during a family argument.
The
54-year-old former rap and reality TV star, whose legal name is William
Jonathan Drayton Jr., didn't testify during a Wednesday evidence hearing
in Las Vegas Justice Court.
But the teen did.
He pointed from the witness stand toward Drayton at the defendant's
table, identified him as the man wearing a clock around his neck, and
told Justice of the Peace Melanie Andress-Tobiasson that Drayton chased
him to a bedroom and stabbed the knife through the door during the
argument early Oct. 17.
The teen quoted the
obscenity he says Drayton used as the rapper threatened to kill him.
Drayton was standing 2 feet away with the knife still in his hand, the
boy said.
The Associated Press is not reporting the boy's name because he is a juvenile.
The
argument began when Drayton woke the boy during a 3 a.m. argument with
the boy's mother, Elizabeth Trujillo, with whom he has lived for about
eight years. It escalated when the teen, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound high
school football and basketball player, wrestled the 5-foot-6 Drayton
into a head lock in the kitchen.
"I told him, `You're not going to talk to my mom like that,'" he testified. "He pushed me. ... I pushed him."
Defense
attorney Tony Abbatangelo later told the judge he believed Drayton may
have been acting in self-defense when he allegedly grabbed the butcher
knife, a steak knife and a pizza cutter during the scuffle.
Abbatangelo noted that a police report didn't include the quote the teen recalled Wednesday.
Andress-Tobiasson said the evidence was enough to bind Drayton over to state court for trial.
She
set arraignment for April 18 on felony charges of assault with a weapon
and child endangerment that could get Drayton up to 12 years in prison
if he's convicted. Drayton also faces a misdemeanor domestic violence
battery charge.
Abbatangelo said he'll seek to
postpone arraignment because Drayton will be out of town April 18 while
he and other members of the rap group Public Enemy are inducted into
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Abbatangelo said Drayton plans to plead not guilty.
