newsmakers

newsmakers

Weapon charge against Young Jeezy dismissed

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.

A felony weapons charge against platinum-selling rapper Young Jeezy has been dismissed after a prosecutor said there wasn’t enough evidence to support the case.

Orange County Deputy District Attorney Renee Jones sought the dismissal during a court hearing Thursday but declined to elaborate on what new information led to it.

Jeezy, whose real name is Jay Wayne Jenkins, and five others were arrested in August after authorities served a search warrant at the Verizon Amphitheatre in Irvine and found an AK-47.

Police were investigating the death of a man who was shot backstage at a concert Jeezy co-headlined with Wiz Khalifa days earlier at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. Jeezy and the other five, who included a tour-bus driver and his wife, were never identified as suspects in the killing.

Beverly Johnson says Bill Cosby drugged her

Beverly Johnson, a groundbreaking model who was the first black woman to be featured on the cover of Vogue magazine, accused Bill Cosby of drugging her during a visit to his home in the 1980s, according to a personal essay Vanity Fair published Thursday.

In the essay, Johnson said she was reading lines for a small part on “The Cosby Show” in the 1980s when the now-embattled comedian served her a coffee that was spiked with something.

“I knew by the second sip of the drink Cosby had given me that I’d been drugged — and drugged good,” Johnson writes in the essay.

Johnson, who admitted she had used drugs while working as a model, said she began to fight Cosby and curse at him. The comedian became irritated and dragged her from his home, placing her in a taxi.

The two never spoke again, according to Johnson’s essay.

Two dozen women have accused Cosby, who became a national figure for his eponymous sitcom and his role as a spokesman for Jell-O, of sexually assaulting or drugging them, and many of the accusations stretch back decades.

Last week, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said the department would be open to investigating additional claims of sexual assault against Cosby, even if the alleged attacks were no longer eligible for prosecution.

Judy Huth, a woman who claimed Cosby got her drunk and assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion when she was a teenager in 1974, was interviewed by LAPD detectives earlier this month.

Cosby’s attorney, Martin Singer, has called Huth’s account “patently false.”

Combined dispatches