Thug who attacked Dave Chapelle on stage during LA gig is jailed
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A man accused of attacking comedian Dave Chappelle onstage at the Hollywood Bowl in May has been sentenced to 270 days in jail after pleading no guilty.
Isaiah Lee, 24, was charged with two misdemeanors: one for assault and another for entering a restricted area during a live event.
He will be held in the county jail, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office said. Term.
The guilty plea came about a month and a half after a judge rejected a defense request for an alternative program that could have resulted in the dismissal of Lee’s charges.
He attacked Chappelle while performing at the Netflix Is a Joke Festival on May 3, when he came up on stage and tried to tackle the comedian to the ground.
Isaiah Lee will serve 270 days in jail after pleading no guilty after attacking Dave Chappelle. He was charged with assault and one count of entering a restricted area during a live event.
The incident took place during Chappelle’s set on the last day of a four-night run at the Hollywood Bowl that was part of the ‘Netflix Is a Joke’ comedy festival.
Lee had been accused of charging Chappelle with a replica pistol containing a large blade that unfolded similar to a pocket knife.
The comedian was able to dodge Lee and was uninjured. Security forcibly subdued Lee, who was later arrested by LAPD and taken to the hospital with a broken arm.
The next day, Chapelle released a statement describing the event as “disturbing and unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate and disturbing as the incident was, Chappelle continued with the show,” the statement read.
“Jamie Foxx and Chris Rock helped calm the crowd with humor before Chappelle introduced the last musical guests of the night.”
Chappelle later said that he was able to speak to the attacker before paramedics took him away.
The comedian claims that Lee had told him that he carried out the attack to raise awareness about the plight of his grandmother in Brooklyn, who was displaced from her home due to gentrification.
However, Lee gave an interview from inside the jail where he said that Chappelle’s jokes about transgender people and the homeless had “triggered” him.
Lee said the new york post office that he was not amused by Chappelle’s reply.
“I identify as bisexual and I wanted him to know that what he said was triggering,” Lee said.
Lee is accused of storming the stage at the Hollywood Bowl with a folding knife and attempting to take down Chappelle in front of an audience on May 3.
Lee said Chappelle’s jokes “triggered” him and that’s why he launched the attack. Chappelle was able to dodge his attacker and avoid injury.
Security guards chased down and overpowered Lee, who was arrested and taken away in an ambulance with a broken arm after the fight.
“I wanted you to know that next time you should consider getting your material through people it might affect first.”
He said he was excited to watch Chappelle’s show, recorded live for Netflix, but grew increasingly angry with the content.
Lee said that he had been homeless before and that the pranks made him emotional and upset.
“I am also a single father and my son is five years old,” he told the newspaper.
“It’s a fight and I wanted Dave Chappelle to know that it’s not a joke.”
He said his breaking point came when another comedian on the show’s lineup made a joke about pedophilia, which Lee said brought back memories of being sexually abused as a 17-year-old.
When asked about the reports that he suffers from mental health problems, Lee said they were “wrong” and “inaccurate.”
However, at the time, his lawyer said that he had been receiving mental health services.
Lee also faces attempted murder charges, after the confrontation led Los Angeles officials to discover that he was a suspect in another crime.
He was accused of stabbing his roommate, Dijon Washington, in December 2021 in a “transitional housing program” usually reserved for the homeless.
Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon credits the publicity surrounding Lee’s attack on Chappelle with helping the victim identify her alleged attacker.
The 24-year-old said he was excited to watch Chappelle’s show, recorded live for Netflix, but grew increasingly angry with the content.
Lee had been accused of charging Chappelle with this replica pistol that contained a large blade that unfolded similar to a pocket knife.
Lee also faces attempted murder charges after the confrontation led Los Angeles officials to discover that he was accused of stabbing his roommate, Dijon Washington, in December 2021.
“The publicity generated by the attack on Mr. Chappelle helped the police solve this crime,” Gascon said in a statement in May.
‘The incident that occurred at the Hollywood Bowl was a misdemeanor and was rightfully referred to the City Attorney’s Office.
“Consistent with the nature and severity of the December attack, Lee now faces felony charges that my office will prosecute.”
Lee pleaded not guilty to the stabbing charge and appeared before Judge James R. Dabney in Los Angeles Superior Court at the Foltz Criminal Justice Center in September.
Washington told a hearing on the stabbing that Lee had become increasingly erratic in the months leading up to the attack on Chappelle.
Lee wrote bizarre notes at his halfway house where he bragged about using marijuana and insulting Washington’s dead brother.
“He was saying, ‘I’m smoking your brother,’ bragging about how much money he’s making, whatever he was doing, how much weed he was smoking,” Washington testified.
‘It didn’t make sense to me. I knew that my brother had passed away a few months before that. It was respectless.
Tensions escalated until Dec. 2 last year when Washington laughed at Lee’s notes.
‘What the hell are you looking at?’ Lee asked before rushing Washington.
“We started fighting and they stabbed me,” Washington testified. Lee then fled the house.