*UPDATE: J-Boog was released from police custody today around 6 p.m. E.T. No domestic violence charges were filed.
According to sources close to former B2K singer Jarell “J-Boog” Houston — who is currently in police custody following an alleged domestic violence dispute with his girlfriend — the singer is only guilty of unpaid traffic tickets and not physical assault.
A story posted today (Jan 5) on TMZ stated that Boog, 25, was “hit with a charge for corporal punishment on a spouse,” stemming from a physical altercation Sunday evening with the mother of his three children, whom he dated off-and-on for nine years.
Earlier today Boog’s ex-B2K bandmate Dreux “Lil Fizz” Frederic and Damuer Leffridge — the chief operations officer of Boog’s label, Popular Records — reached out to VIBE to explain what they call a “cold twist” of the story picked up by the media today.
According to Leffridge, Boog, who currently lives in a $3 million beach front house in the opulent Marina del Rey section of California, only got into a verbal dispute with his baby’s mother, which alerted their neighbors.
“Me and Boog are like four or five streets apart,” says Leffridge. “We’re like the only black dudes in the neighborhood, amongst a lot of wealthy Caucasian people. And they don’t want to hear all that loud music and stuff. Jarell and them, they keep up a lot of noise — this just the truth. And when him and her were screaming on each other on a Sunday afternoon, talking crazy, one of the neighbors decided to call the police.”
TMZ reported that more than five squad cars showed up at the singer’s house. At the time of the incident, Boog and his girlfriend were the only two in the house.
“The reality is, the police came and they couldn’t get in the security gate,” Leffridge explains. “So they chose to jump the gate. Boog doesn’t always pay attention to the buzzer, so he doesn’t know when people are outside sometimes. So police was outside for awhile trying to get his attention. The police said that if [Boog and his girlfriend] hadn’t been so hostile they would have let them stayed, but because they were both screaming they chose to break them up and take him instead of taking her.”
After cops took Boog away, Fizz says Boog’s girlfriend panicked.
“His girl called me after the incident happened, and she didn’t know what to do,” Fizz says. “She didn’t even know where the phone call to the police came from. So she was like, ‘Can you get over here ASAP, they just took him, they just arrested him, we just had an argument. I don’t know what happened. They trying to say it was domestic violence but he didn’t put any hands on me or anything.’”
Fizz and Leffridge, flanked by media, are currently awaiting Boog’s release from the LAX Court in Los Angeles.
“There hasn’t been an official filing for domestic violence,” Leffridge says. “She’s not interested in pressing charges. TMZ got it like he beat some woman to death, and that just didn’t happen. Boog went here today to see what the district attorney is going to do. He had like two or three traffic tickets that he needed to take care of. That’s the reason why he had to stay yesterday, to clean up the tickets.”
Leffridge went on to say that, according to the district attorney, the case will potentially be dropped. As of press time, no charges have been filed.
J-Boog and Lil Fizz recently released a single called “Bounce” on Popular Records and have just returned from a six-week tour in Great Britain. Their album, Nightlife, is due in May. —Linda Hobbs