T.I. just can’t seem to catch a break.
Prosecutors in Henry County, Ga., have charged the rapper with three misdemeanors following an incident in early May where T.I. misplaced his keys outside his gated community. A verbal dispute with the security guard who was allegedly less than cooperative in helping T.I. has now resulted in simple assault, public drunkenness, and disorderly conduct charges, according to TMZ.
As The Root reported earlier, T.I.’s altercation with security guard Euwan James started innocuously enough, but quickly escalated:
T.I. said that the guard was sleeping at his post when he tried to gain entrance, and when the guard phoned his wife, Tiny, and she requested that entrance be granted, the guard cursed at her.
“Who the fuck do you think you is talking to me like this?” the guard allegedly yelled at Tiny.
Eventually, T.I. was let in, but when he asked for the guard’s name, the guard refused to give one. It wasn’t until T.I. got back to his house that he decided to return to the guard post to again try to get the guard’s name. But the guard refused, and Harris said he told him, “You can step outside the booth into the street so we can talk.”
According to Page Six, James says he felt threatened by T.I.
While the altercation between T.I. (born Clifford Harris) and James never came to blows, in Georgia, words can be enough to warrant a charge of simple assault if prosecutors feel someone attempted to violently harm someone else or put them in a position where they can be harmed.
Henry County prosecutors have also stuck with charging T.I. with public drunkenness, despite him appearing quite lucid as he was asking cops why he was arrested (leaked video of T.I’s exchange shows him during the booking process).
In a statement made to the Atlanta Constitution-Journal, T.I.’s attorney Steve Sadow called the charges “baseless, ill-founded and unjustified,” adding that James had been fired from his post following the dispute for “the way he handled the situation.”
T.I. doesn’t face any jail time from the charges, Page Six reports.