Jailed rapper shuttled into state

A Memphis rapper whose performance at a downtown Little Rock nightclub ended in gunfire early July 1 was booked into the St. Francis County jail Friday on charges related to a separate shooting about a week earlier.

The gunfire that broke out July 1 inside the nowclosed Power Ultra Lounge at 220 W. Sixth St. in downtown Little Rock left 28 people injured and made national news.

Rapper Ricky Hampton, who performs under the name Finese 2Tymes,

was arrested the next day in Alabama on Arkansas warrants stemming from a June 25 shooting outside Club Envy in Forrest City.

In addition to facing state charges including aggravated assault and first-degree battery, Hampton is facing a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm in the Forrest City shooting. He is to be arraigned Tuesday in federal court in Little Rock.

According to an affidavit filed in support of the federal criminal complaint by a task force officer with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, witnesses said the 25-year-old rapper became angry as he was leaving the Forrest City club June 25 and began screaming profanities at a woman whose car blocked his exit.

The officer wrote Quaydria Thomas tried to back up but wasn’t moving quickly enough to satisfy Hampton, and he fired a shot from an AK- 47- style rifle as she tried to pull away, shattering the car’s rear window and wounding the woman in the neck.

Thomas drove herself to a Forrest City hospital and was treated for the gunshot wound, authorities said.

The next weekend, on July 1, Hampton was performing at Power Ultra Lounge when gunfire broke out. Bullets struck 25 people, and another three were injured trying to flee, police have said.

Little Rock police have made no arrests in the Power Ultra Lounge shooting but have named Hampton as a “person of interest” in the case. He isn’t facing any charges tied to the Little Rock shooting.

On July 2, federal officers in Birmingham, Ala., where Hampton was performing at another rap show, arrested him on warrants stemming from the Forrest City shooting.

After Hampton’s arrest, agents reported finding a Century Arms, model RAS-47, 7.62-caliber rifle in a Mercedes Benz in which Hampton had been riding. Hampton told ATF agents that the gun was the same one he had outside Club Envy when Thomas was shot.

A federal criminal complaint filed July 3 allowed federal marshals to hold Hampton until the next regular meeting of a federal grand jury. A grand jury in the Eastern District of Arkansas indicted him July 6 on the federal firearm charge.

On Friday, a federal judge signed a writ ordering the

U.S. Marshal’s Service and the St. Francis County jail to ensure his appearance at 2 p. m. Tuesday in the Little Rock courtroom of U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Kearney.

He was removed from his Alabama cell about 2:30 a.m. Friday and was booked into the St. Francis County jail sometime before 12: 45 p.m., authorities said.

Hampton’s federal indictment notes that he was convicted in 2010 in Shelby County, Tenn., on two separate aggravated robbery charges, which bar him from possessing a gun.