Rap music mogul Marion "Suge' Knight has been injured in an early morning shooting Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, at a West Hollywood nightclub but is expected to survive.Damian Dovarganes/The Associated Press
Death Row Records founder and rap mogul Marion (Suge) Knight was injured in an early morning shooting Sunday in a packed nightclub but was expected to survive, a Los Angeles County sheriff's sergeant said.
Mr. Knight, 49, was one of three club patrons struck by gunfire around 1:30 a.m. at the 1OAK on West Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard, said Sergeant C. Tatar, watch commander at the Los Angeles County sheriff's West Hollywood station.
The shooting came just hours before MTV's Video Music Awards on Sunday evening in Inglewood.
R&B singer Chris Brown, who was co-hosting a party at the nightclub with Pia Mia, was also inside the club but not hit by the gunfire, Sgt. Tatar said. MTV said it had no affiliation or connection to the event.
TMZ entertainment news website reported that Mr. Knight sustained multiple bullet wounds and was in intensive care after undergoing surgery at Cedars-Sinai Hospital.
Cedars-Sinai would not confirm or deny that Mr. Knight was a patient, citing privacy laws.
Two other victims of the shooting, a man aged 32 and a 19-year-old woman, were also being treated at local hospitals and were expected to survive.
Authorities are still seeking a suspect and declined to release additional information, citing the ongoing investigation.
Representatives for Mr. Brown and the party did not return a call for comment. Calls to the club rang unanswered.
Mr. Knight has been shot before. In 2005, he was struck in the leg during an MTV awards preparty in Miami.
Mr. Knight's genius for poaching up-and-coming talent helped him land and make megastars out of Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, and shifted the centre of the rap universe to the West Coast the 1990s.
He's been in and of jail in the past two decades due to parole violations and physical attacks relating to a "rap war" he fuelled with East Coast artists.
Mr. Knight's hip-hop empire declined in the mid-1990s; Mr. Shakur was murdered and Dr. Dre left the Death Row label.
Financial troubles also eventually lead to Death Row Records filing for bankruptcy.
With a report from Reuters