Rapper Rick Ross was arrested Thursday in Miami Beach on domestic violence charges after a woman told police he struck and strangled her in August, according to an arrest affidavit.
Ross, 50, whose real name is William Leonard Roberts II, faces charges of felony battery by strangulation and misdemeanor battery. The rap mogul surrendered at a Miami Beach police station Thursday morning on his attorney’s advice, according to the affidavit from Miami Beach Police.
The woman reported the alleged assault to police on Sept. 29, saying it occurred the morning of Aug. 28 at Roberts’ residence on Star Island. The woman, who is not named in the affidavit, told investigators that she and Roberts had been in a relationship for about a year and were living together at the time.
She said Roberts woke her around 7:44 a.m., angry that she had been tagged in an Instagram photo. He questioned her about “lying” to him about a relationship with someone else and slapped her in the face, according to her account in the affidavit.
She said Roberts grabbed and twisted the collar of her hoodie until she could not breathe. The woman told investigators Roberts then grabbed her ponytail, slammed her against a wall and struck her in the face, leaving her with a bloodied lip.
She provided detectives with a sworn statement and photographs of her injuries, police wrote.
Roberts did not provide a statement about the alleged assault when he surrendered Thursday, according to the affidavit.
In his first court appearance, Roberts’s lawyer, Bradley Horenstein, asked the judge to expedite Roberts’s release because he “is a celebrity.”
“For purposes of his safety, I don’t know what your honor can do,” Horenstein said.
Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Mindy S. Glazer said, “Mr. Roberts, I have no idea who you are except as somebody in the court who is going to be treated fairly.” She set his bail at $5,000.
He was released on bond from a Miami-Dade County jail following the hearing. While leaving jail Thursday afternoon, he denied the allegations to reporters.
“I am totally innocent of these fabricated allegations made against me,” Roberts said. “I’ll be in Dubai tomorrow, Paris Saturday, and I plan on having a bowl of rigatoni with heavy marinara Sunday. I repeat, rigatoni, heavy marinara.”
The rapper’s attorney did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The arrest follows public allegations of abuse by Roberts’s former girlfriend, Jazzma Kendrick, who recently posted photographs online of injuries she said he caused. It’s not clear whether Kendrick is the woman who filed the affidavit with police.
The Grammy-nominated rapper is known for hits such as “Hustlin’” and his debut album “Port of Miami.” In 2008, he founded Maybach Music Group, a Miami-based record label that has signed artists including Meek Mill, Wale and French Montana.
He has faced assault allegations before.
In 2015, Roberts was arrested in Georgia on charges of kidnapping, aggravated battery and aggravated assault stemming from an alleged attack on a groundskeeper at his estate. He pleaded no contest to aggravated assault in 2017 under a deal that dropped the other felony charges, according to TMZ. He received time served, a $10,000 fine and five years’ probation for five misdemeanors.
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