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A rapper who was performing at an Arkansas nightclub when more than two dozen people were wounded in a burst of gunfire this weekend was arrested early on Sunday for outstanding warrants unrelated to the shooting, law enforcement officials said.
Ricky Hampton, 25, from Memphis, Tennessee, who performs under the name Finesse 2 Tymes, was arrested outside the Side Effects Club in Birmingham, Alabama, at 1:15 a.m. on charges of aggravated assault with a gun, Cliff LaBarge, a U.S. Marshals Service spokesman, said in an email.
He was taken into custody on arrest warrants out of Forest City, Arkansas, the Little Rock Police Department said in a Twitter message.
Members of the U.S. Marshals, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Hampton, and another man with him was also taken into custody, LaBarge said.
Hampton and the other man were arrested after they pulled up to the Side Effects Club in a Mercedes and exited the car, LaBarge said in an interview.
Officers seized three weapons found in the car, LaBarge said.
Police said no arrests had been made yet in the shooting at Little Rock’s Power Ultra Lounge, where 25 people were wounded by gunshot early Saturday morning and three others were injured as clubgoers scrambled for the exits. All of the victims were expected to survive.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office in Birmingham said on its website that Hampton was booked into jail early Sunday after being arrested on a “fugitive from justice” warrant.
A promotional page for Hampton’s performance shows a young man looking down the sight of what appears to be a gun, with the barrel pointed at the viewer.
Little Rock police said on Saturday that the shooting at the nightclub was not linked to terrorism and that it might have stemmed from a running dispute between rival gangs.
A spokesman for the Little Rock police could not be reached immediately for further comment on Sunday.
After the shooting, the city revoked the Power Ultra Lounge’s liquor license and took steps to shut down the club.
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said the melee highlighted a spike in violent crime in the state’s largest city and called for steps to reverse the trend.
Little Rock police are investigating about a dozen drive-by shootings in the past week, local media reported, including an incident in which a 7-year-old boy was wounded.
(Reporting by Chris Kenning in Chicago and Frank McGurty in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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