Hip-hop singer Jay "Young Jeezy" Jenkins and five others pleaded not guilty Tuesday to illegal gun charges.
Hip-hop singer Jay “Young Jeezy” Jenkins and five others pleaded not guilty Tuesday to illegal gun charges in Irvine following a fatal shooting at a tour stop in Mountain View last weekend, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said.
Jenkins, 36, is charged with felony possession of an assault weapon along with David Robert Kuniansky-Altman, 31, Alexa Beason, 53, Peter Arthur Maynard, 38, William Paul Gilmore, 48, and Kena Jermaine Marshall, 39, according to district attorney spokeswoman Farrah Emami.
All six entered not guilty pleas in Superior Court in Newport Beach and their next appearance in court will be a pretrial hearing on Sept. 5, Emami said. Jenkins will be represented by private attorney Alex Kessel and Kuniansky-Altman by lawyer Rudolph Loewenstein, while the others will have government-appointed counsels, according to Emami.
Prosecutors allege that the six defendants possessed an illegal assault weapon on a tour bus on Sunday, the day they were arrested by Irvine and Mountain View police at the Verizon Amphitheater in Irvine, Emami said. When he was arrested Sunday, Jenkins had been on tour for concerts with the headliner Wiz Khalifa.
Jenkins had performed at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View on Friday night when Eric Johnson, a 38-year-old man from Orinda, was shot to death backstage, according to Mountain View police.
Police obtained search warrants at the Irvine venue for Jenkins and the five others, Mountain View police said. The criminal complaint also charged Maynard and Marshall with felony counts of being felons in possession of a separate firearm and for felons in possession of ammunition.
Maynard has a previous conviction for criminal conspiracy in Georgia in 2008 and Marshall has one for possessing marijuana with the intent to sell in 1995, also in Georgia, according to the district attorney’s office.
Bail for each of the six defendants, who were booked into the Orange County Central Jail Complex in Santa Ana, was set at $1 million, Emami said. No one has been arrested in connection with Johnson’s murder, according to Mountain View police.
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