LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight was arrested on suspicion of murder on Friday after police said he ran over two people with a pickup truck at a fast food restaurant in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton, killing one and injuring the other before fleeing.
Knight, the 49-year-old co-founder of Death Row Records, was booked at about 3 a.m. (1100 GMT) and was being held in lieu of $2 million bail, the department said.
The Thursday afternoon incident took place after Knight drove up to a burger shop in Compton, south of downtown Los Angeles, and began arguing with two people outside, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lieutenant John Corina said.
Knight and one of the men began throwing punches at each other through the window of his Ford F-150 Raptor pickup truck before Knight put the vehicle in reverse, knocking one of the victims to the ground, Corina said.
Knight then pulled forward, running over the first victim and striking the second, before leaving the scene, Corina said.
One of the two victims, identified as 55-year-old Terry Carter, later died at a hospital. The condition of the second person, who was hospitalized, was not made public.
Knight arrived at the sheriff's department West Hollywood station accompanied by his attorney to take questions from detectives and was later arrested on suspicion of murder.
“His version of events didn’t match what the witnesses were telling us," Corina said.
Knight could be brought before a judge as early as Monday, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office said.
"I feel strongly that Mr. Knight did not do anything wrong in this matter. He was attacked by a number of individuals, that's already been corroborated by certain witnesses," Knight's attorney, James Blatt, told television station KTLA.
In November, Knight pleaded not guilty to a charge stemming from accusations he stole a camera from a celebrity photographer in Beverly Hills. A few months earlier, he was shot and wounded inside a West Hollywood nightclub along with two others during a party ahead of the MTV Video Music Awards.
Death Row Records was a leading rap label in the 1990s, featuring artists such as Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg.
Knight's hip-hop empire declined after he went to prison for a parole violation, Shakur was shot to death and Dr. Dre left the label.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis, Dan Whitcomb and Eric Kelsey in Los Angeles and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Mohammad Zargham, Sandra Maler and Eric Beech)