Flavor Flav Facing Trial, Felony Charges

NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 23: Rapper Flavor Flav of Public Enemy performs onstage at the 2009 VH1 Hip Hop Honors at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on September 23, 2009 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images) (2009 Getty Images)

Flava Flav might be heading to the slammer… soon.

The reality TV personality and rapper, Flavor Flav is facing a trial on felony charges that he threatened his longtime girlfriend's 17-year-old son with a butcher knife during a family argument.

The 54-year-old, whose legal name is William Jonathan Drayton Jr., didn't testify during a Wednesday evidence hearing in Las Vegas Justice Court.

But the teen did. He pointed from the witness stand toward Drayton at the defendant's table, identified him as the man wearing a clock around his neck, and told Justice of the Peace Melanie Andress-Tobiasson that Drayton chased him to a bedroom and stabbed the knife through the door during the argument early Oct. 17.

The teen quoted the obscenity he says Drayton used as the rapper threatened to kill him. Drayton was standing 2 feet away with the knife still in his hand, the boy said.

The Associated Press is not reporting the boy's name because he is a juvenile.

The argument began when Drayton woke the boy during a 3 a.m. argument with the boy's mother, Elizabeth Trujillo, with whom he has lived for about eight years. It escalated when the teen, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound high school football and basketball player, wrestled the 5-foot-6 Drayton into a head lock in the kitchen.

"I told him, 'You're not going to talk to my mom like that,'" he testified. "He pushed me. ... I pushed him."

Defense attorney Tony Abbatangelo later told the judge he believed Drayton may have been acting in self-defense when he allegedly grabbed the butcher knife, a steak knife and a pizza cutter during the scuffle.

Abbatangelo noted that a police report didn't include the quote the teen recalled Wednesday.
Andress-Tobiasson said the evidence was enough to bind Drayton over to state court for trial.

She set arraignment for April 18 on felony charges of assault with a weapon and child endangerment that could get Drayton up to 12 years in prison if he's convicted. Drayton also faces a misdemeanor domestic violence battery charge.

Abbatangelo said he'll seek to postpone arraignment because Drayton will be out of town April 18 while he and other members of the rap group Public Enemy are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Abbatangelo said Drayton plans to plead not guilty.

Based on reporting by The Associated Press