Rapper A$AP Rocky Arrested In Sweden After Apparent Street Fight
Video of the incident posted by the rapper appears to suggest he and his crew were not the aggressors and had asked two men who they said had been following them to leave them alone before the brawl broke out.
American rapper A$AP Rocky was arrested in Sweden after an alleged street fight broke out between the rapper’s crew and a man who had reportedly been following them.
An official from the Swedish Prosecution office confirmed to CBS News that the rapper was arrested for suspected “gross assault” after the altercation in Stockholm between the entourage and a couple of young men.
After the melee Sunday, the rapper took to social media to proclaim his innocence posting several videos onto his Instagram account that appear to show A$AP Rocky and his team trying to de-escalate the situation.
“Go that way,” his bodyguard can be heard telling a man dressed in a white polo shirt.
The same man can then be seen trying to strike the bodyguard. A$AP Rocky claimed on social media that the man hit his bodyguard in the face with a pair of headphones.
Even after that exchange, the rapper and his bodyguard continue to repeatedly try to encourage the man and another man seen in the video to walk away.
“We don’t want to fight you all, we’re not trying to go to jail,” the rapper said in the three-minute long recording.
He later adds that his entourage doesn’t want any part of the altercation and claims the men had been following him. A female voice in the recording can also be heard saying that the men had slapped her butt.
But the altercation continued to escalate as the man claimed that the rapper and his associates had broken his headphones, witnesses said.
It’s unclear what happened next, but in another video obtained by TMZ, the New York City-born rapper and his crew can be seen hurling the man onto the ground and repeatedly punching him.
Authorities in Sweden say they are only in the “initial stage” of the investigation. Swedish authorities have up to three days to hold the rapper, who was arrested Tuesday, before he would need to appear before a judge to face formal charges.