The truth outta Compton: why did Suge Knight run over his friend with a truck?

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/feb/02/suge-knight-murder-accident-straight-outta-compton

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Last Thursday, Ice Cube and Dr Dre were filming a promotional video for Straight Outta Compton, the highly anticipated film about NWA – the seminal hip-hop group that brought the two stars together 30 years ago in Compton, California.

Suge Knight, the 49-year-old music mogul whose legacy is as brutal as the gangsta rap music his Death Row Records helped popularize, was not allowed.

The man has been shot, gone bankrupt, sold Death Row and lived in and out of prison, even if he remained something between a myth and a legend in the history of hip-hop. But security turned away Knight – who is slated to be portrayed in the movie – a source who was on the set tells the Guardian, adding that a Compton sergeant cited Dr Dre’s restraining order against Knight: the pair fell out in the 1990s and haven’t been close since. Others insisted they simply weren’t interested in the theatrics that seem to follow Knight wherever he goes.

“They didn’t want no drama around the movie set,” said another source close to the film-making, who asked to remain anonymous because he wasn’t authorized to speak on behalf of the production. “Let them people make their movie in peace.”

Related: Suge Knight could face 30 years in jail after arrest for fatal hit-and-run

The confusing, high-profile and ultimately deadly incident that ensued was anything but peaceful: Terry Carter, a record label owner in Compton and interlocutor – “his whole plan was to get Suge and Dre back together”, according to David Weldon, a producer known as Rhythm D who has worked with Carter and Knight – was dead. Suge Knight was facing 30 years in jail for murder, as his longtime lawyer called everything an accident. The Los Angeles county sheriff’s department said it was reviewing video evidence and interviewing people who told them the death “looked like it was an intentional act”. On Monday, the department revoked more than $2m bail, saying he was considered a flight risk.

It sounds like yet another sordid chapter in Knight’s life, where gangland violence and entertainment-industry egos have intersected with unexpected consequences. But according to multiple people with intimate knowledge of the situation, the latest high-profile episode in hip-hop lore may have been an accident: Knight, apparently in the midst of being attacked by a third man in a hamburger-joint parking lot but too weak to fight back, attempted to flee the scene, not only hitting his aggressor but running over Carter – his friend – in the process.

“Terry was coming up in the lot, the car hits him, knocks him down, and it just rolls over him – the tire ran over his head,” said the on-set source, offering the most detailed public account of the episode yet in two interviews over the weekend but also requesting anonymity due to the ongoing nature of the police investigation.

‘I guess he was trying to help Suge’: the don, the peacemaker and the punches from a gang affiliate

Following the filming of the commercial at the historic barbershop Holiday Styles, the Straight Outta Compton crew broke for lunch on Thursday afternoon and headed back to their trailers on Compton’s east side on Bullis Road. That’s where Knight pulled up in his red Ford F-150 Raptor, which sits high off the ground with off-road tires.

Cle “Bone” Sloan, an actor from the movie Training Day and an affiliate of the gang known as the Bloods, was working site security and as a location scout assistant, according to the two anonymous sources. He and Knight did not get along, and Sloan apparently made a stink about Knight needing to leave the premises.

“Suge had never got out of the car. He had talked to Ice Cube’s security, and he said they could talk about it later on,” said the on-set source. “Bone came and started arguing with Suge, said he should get out of there. Suge said, ‘I’m already leaving.’ They had an altercation.”

“They got into some kind of verbal altercation and it escalated,” LA county sheriff lieutenant John Corina said at a press conference last week.

Related: Suge Knight: has time run out for hip-hop's real 'Teflon Don'?

At this point, Suge called Terry Carter, who, considering his relationship with Ice Cube – Carter served as a co-executive producer on the soundtrack for 1998 film The Players Club, which Cube wrote and directed – thought he could advise the best way to smooth things over. So Carter and Knight agreed to meet at Tam’s Burgers, a Compton fast-food staple a few miles away on West Rosecrans Avenue.

In a series of violent events that police said happened around 2.55pm, Knight pulled up next to Carter’s Dodge Magnum just outside the parking lot, on 142nd street. The two began talking through their car windows, the-on-set source said, cordially and without confrontation – as don and peacemaker.

Then Sloan arrived on the scene, according to the on-set source, hopping a short wall surrounding the parking lot, and began punching Knight through his truck’s window. Knight drove a few feet away, into the entry lane for Tam’s parking lot, and put the truck into park.

Sources familiar with both sides said they assumed Knight would emerge from his vehicle to defend himself, not retreat. After all, he’s an enormous former defensive end for the UNLV football team, while Sloan has a smaller frame.

But after being hospitalized with a blood clot in November – and being shot six times in an unrelated altercation at a party thrown by Chris Brown before the MTV Video Music Awards in August – the physical strength that so defined Knight’s public image has greatly diminished.

Sloan ran up to Knight’s truck again and continued punching him, the on-set source said. This appears to be when the initial police report on the incident says the argument “escalated” again, and Knight put his truck in reverse, “striking one of the victims” – identified as Sloan by sources, though not by the police report – to the ground.

An associate of Sloane’s arrived on the scene, the on-set source said, and was making his way toward the rear of Knight’s truck. That’s apparently when Knight put his vehicle into drive and ran over Sloan. (He was hospitalized, but his injuries were not life-threatening.)

In the meantime, Carter had exited his Dodge and entered the parking lot.

“I guess he was trying to help Suge,” said the on-set source. “I don’t know what was on his mind.”

Related: NWA Straight Outta Compton biopic trailer: what we learned

Whatever was on Knight’s mind at that moment may be the key to the case. If prosecutors show that Knight intentionally drove his truck at Sloan aware, but impervious, that Carter was in the way, Knight could face a quicker path to ending up in jail for much of the rest of his life.

Because in the next instant, Knight may have been trying to escape, but he hit Carter with the right front fender of his truck, then killed him.

“When Suge took off, Terry ends up being on the right bumper,” said the on-set source. “I guess when Terry was coming up in the lot, the car hits him, knocks him down, and it just rolls over him.”

Knight’s attorney, James Blatt, has said his client was unaware he hit the men, insisting that video evidence would prove the incident to be an accident – a defensive driving maneuver after being attacked by four men. Corina, at the sheriff’s office, said that logic was difficult to believe – and that there was no evidence thus far of that many extra attackers.

‘They were pretty cool with each other’

Suge Knight counted Terry Carter as a friend. The two came up together as young men in Compton, and rose in the music industry together – Knight with Death Row, and Carter with his own Heavyweight Records.

Since at least last year, Carter had made it a kind of mission to facilitate the reconciliation between Knight and Dr Dre, the rapper/producer responsible for Death Row’s seminal album The Chronic. Dr Dre left the label, apparently after becoming disenchanted with the increasing influence of gangs at the label.

Carter was not a gang member, but he had friends in local gangs and was seen as a tough but sensible interlocutor, who could bring people together.

“Terry’s favorite term was ‘parlay’ – as in, ‘I’m trying to ‘parlay’ something, to make it happen,” said Weldon, the producer who spoke with Carter recently about his intentions to reconcile the beef with Dr Dre as the Straight Outta Compton filming wrapped up.

So if Carter was his friend, why did Knight flee the scene after hitting him?

The Los Angeles Times reported that there is a hold on his driver’s license. But those familiar with the situation say Knight may just not have known he even hit his friend.

Related: Gangsta rap is dead – and Suge Knight’s arrest has buried it | James Peterson

“I don’t think Suge’s actions were intended to harm Terry Carter,” said Weldon. “No matter how much the media is going to demonize him, I know that they were pretty cool with each other.”

Though Knight’s stature in the music industry had fallen since the glory days of Death Row, which profited tens of millions of dollars in the 1990s from albums by Dr Dre, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Tupac Shakur, he remains a legendary name in Compton. Friends say that Carter saw, in the potential reconciliation between Knight and Dr Dre, a chance not only to increase his own profile but to make a new kind of history.

“All he was trying to do was unite the brothers that had beef with each other,” Weldon says.

Instead, Knight is facing a suspicion of murder charge and his longest stay in prison since 2001, when he finished a nearly five-year sentence for a parole violation stemming from his 1996 beating of a Crips member in Las Vegas. Shakur had also been involved in that incident – and was murdered in a drive-by shooting very shortly thereafter. When his east-coast rival, the Notorious BIG, died about six months later, Knight became a suspect. He has long denied involvement and was never charged.

Knight has managed to bounce back from the accusations, the shootings and the arrests. But it is the death of a friend – not a rival – that may finally take him down.