Police in Charlotte, North Carolina, spent much of Thursday night driving around in search of the two men suspected in the shooting attack on rapper Waka Flocka Flame's tour bus on Wednesday. Before the pursuit heated up, the Atlanta "Hands Up" MC's mother/manager posted a YouTube video in which she adamantly denied that her son had anything to do with the incident.
According to The Charlotte Observer, police chased after two men who were driving a white Dodge Charger that is believed to have been involved in the incident, which took place in the parking lot of a Car Stereo Warehouse in Charlotte where the 24-year-old rapper's tour bus was getting a sound system upgrade.
Around 10:30 p.m., undercover officers, spotted a Charger matching the description of one of the vehicles that drove up to Flame's bus and sprayed it with several bullets. They called for backup and when marked patrol cars arrived, the car reportedly sideswiped one of the police vehicles as it sped away. After officers gave chase, the two men abandoned the vehicle and took off on foot, and though police conducted a manhunt for several hours, they were unable to locate the suspects. On Wednesday, Waka (born Juaquin Malphurs) was outside of the bus signing autographs and posing for photos with fans when two cars pulled up and unidentified men in the vehicles exchanged gunfire with members of the rapper's entourage. One man, 20-year-old Antonio Stukes, was shot in the shoulder during the firefight and police are still trying to determine what role he played in the incident. An attorney for Stukes, who was released from a North Carolina prison in December after serving time for crimes including assault with a deadly weapon, said his client was an innocent bystander who had gone to the shop to talk to Waka about a record deal.
The paper reported that Waka voluntarily went to the police station for questioning and was released late Wednesday. No one has been charged so far. In the YouTube video posted by the rapper's mother and manager, Debra Antney, in response to the shooting, she mostly took issue with the media accounts of what happened.
"It is safe to say that we took no part in this," she said of the shooting, which she claimed was a random event that resulted in her son's tour bus being hit four times. "We had nothing to do with this. This was somebody else that came up with random shooting, doing whatever else it is that they do. Were they even shooting at the bus? Who knows? Because there were other cars that were hit. So there were cars that was letting loose and fire, to my understanding, but because the bus happened to be out there and it happens to be 'Waka Flocka,' so therefore it made 'good news.' "
Antney said her son's security followed "appropriate protocol" and returned fire when fired upon, and that everyone involved on Waka's side, including the rapper himself, were all properly licensed to carry weapons.
"He wasn't there, he didn't do anything," she said of her son in the five-minute video. "To all of you that think that all we are about is hood stuff and that we promote violence ... hip-hop is a way of life. That's what it was first created from, really. It was either your past experiences or somebody else's experiences. Like, things that were going on — that's what you [were] putting out in music."
Charlotte police and label spokespeople for Waka had not returned requests for comment at press time.
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