Atlanta rapper Young Thug was arrested Thursday at Lenox Square mall due to an active warrant.
Officers were responding to a stolen vehicle call at the mall just after 8 p.m. when they spotted the rapper, whose real name is Jeffrey Lamar Williams. He had an active warrant out of Atlanta for failure to appear, police said.
The rapper had $2,500 on him, Atlanta police said. He was given the money by a family member prior to being taken in.
“There were no injuries as a result of this arrest,” police said in an incident report.
It was not immediately clear if the warrant out on Williams was regarding an incident last year when he was arrested at Perimeter Mall for allegedly threatening to shoot a security guard.
He was charged with terroristic threats and booked into the DeKalb County jail, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported. He was released on a $10,000 bond.
In Thursday’s incident, Atlanta police said they considered that he is a celebrity when they arrested him.
“Officers did take into consideration that Mr. Williams is a high profile music entertainer and escorted him to the employee stairwell and walked out of the rear to avoid crowd issues with taking Mr. Williams into custody,” police said in the report.
Williams was taken to a patrol car and placed in handcuffs.
He was later released.
The Shade Room, an entertainment news website, obtained video of officers escorting an unidentifiable man out of the mall while a mall visitor says, “Man, they trying to lock Thug up, man.”
In another video posted on Instagram after the incident, the rapper is dancing and saying he was “bigger than the law.”
About the Author
