Drayton faces a felony assault with a deadly weapon charge carrying a possible penalty of up to six years in prison.
This image released by the Las Vegas Police Department shows rapper Flavor Flav, also known as William Jonathan Drayton, Jr., in a police booking photo taken Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2012. Las Vegas police say that Flavor Flav was jailed early Wednesday on felony charges stemming from a domestic argument with his fiancee and threats to attack her teenage son with a knife. Officer Bill Cassell said no one was injured before Drayton was arrested about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, at a home in a neighborhood several miles southwest of the Las Vegas Strip. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Police Department)
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Entertainer Flavor Flav was arrested Wednesday on felony and misdemeanor charges after arguing with his fiancee and threatening to attack her teenage son with a knife, Las Vegas police said.
The 53-year-old former rapper, hip-hop and reality television star, whose legal name is William Jonathan Drayton Jr., was taken into custody about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday at a home several miles southwest of the Las Vegas Strip, Las Vegas police Officer Bill Cassell said.
Patrol officers did not report that anyone was injured.
Drayton faces a felony assault with a deadly weapon charge carrying a possible penalty of up to six years in prison and a misdemeanor battery-domestic violence charge that could get him six months in county jail, according to jail records.
He was being held on $23,000 bail at Clark County jail pending an initial court appearance on Thursday. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.
Drayton, whose public persona includes wearing a big clock on his chest, was an original member of the politically and socially militant rap group Public Enemy in the 1980s and '90s.
In recent years he has starred in several reality TV series and lent his name and recipes to short-lived chicken and soul food restaurants in Clinton, Iowa, and Las Vegas.
He has a criminal history that includes arrests and convictions on traffic infractions, a month in jail for assaulting his then-girlfriend in 1991, and three months in prison for shooting at a neighbor in New York in 1993.
In Las Vegas, Drayton was arrested in May 2011 on outstanding unpaid traffic warrants and paid a fine. Court records show he has been ticketed eight times since August 2008 and paid almost $7,000 in fines for driving violations, including multiple instances of driving without a valid license.