DEL.ICIO.USUpdated: 9:02 p.m. August 22, 2008
Rapper Da Brat gets 3 years for nightclub attack
She was convicted of striking a woman with a bottle, causing permanent facial damage
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution
Friday, August 22, 2008
A DeKalb County judge sentenced rapper Da Brat to three years in prison Friday for hitting an Atlanta Falcons cheerleader in the head with a nearly full liquor bottle at an Atlanta-area nightclub.
Superior Court Judge Gail Flake also sentenced the rapper, whose real name is Shawntae Harris, to seven years probation and 200 hours of community service. Harris also must get substance abuse treatment and a mental evaluation and attend anger management classes.
Joey Ivansco / jivansco@ajc.com
In 2000, Da Brat, who was born Shawntae Harris, faced charges that she beat a woman with a gun during a dispute over VIP seating in a Buckhead nightclub.
“She feels a great deal of remorse for what she did,” said Harris’s lawyer, Thomas Clegg. “She is willing to accept responsibility for what she has done.”
A handful of Harris’s family sat on the back row of the courtroom. They wept when a sheriff’s deputy took her into custody.
“I love y’all,” Harris, 34, said as she was led out of the courtroom.
“We love you too” the relatives replied in unison.
Dressed in black pants and top with her short hair in braids, Harris did not comment other than to answer “yes” several time when the judge asked her if she understood her guilty plea to a felony aggravated assault charge and her negotiated sentencing.
On the night of Oct. 31, 2007, Harris went to a private Halloween party at Studio 72, a Lawrenceville Highway nightclub owned by rap mogul Jermaine Dupri. At some point she bumped into Shayla Stevens, an Atlanta Falcons cheerleader working as a hostess at the event.
Moments later, Harris struck Stevens in the head with a nearly full bottle of rum, prosecutors said. Stevens fell down some stairs to a cement floor and suffered a severe facial cut. Stevens has a permanent scar, the judge said Friday in noting the severity of the attack.
Stevens was in court but did not speak or talk to reporters.
In a separate civil case, Stevens is suing Harris for unspecified medical and other costs. The case is pending.
It was not Harris’s first brush with trouble. In March 2000, Atlanta police arrested Harris after she struck a woman at a Buckhead bar. She was sentenced to 12 months of probation.
Harris, who lives part time in Atlanta and Chicago, was the first female rapper to sell a million copies of an album, for 1994’s “Funkdafied,” on Dupri’s Atlanta-based So So Def imprint. Over her four-CD career she toured and recorded with longtime friend Mariah Carey; was nominated for a Grammy for “Not Tonight,” a collaboration with Missy Elliott, Lil’ Kim, the late Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes and Angie Martinez; and more recently appeared on reality TV shows “The Surreal Life” and “The Celebrity Fit Club”.
Her last CD, “Limelite, Luv & Niteclubz” was released in 2003.
—Staff writer Sonia Murray contributed to this report.
