“Empire” actor Bryshere Gray was arrested Monday morning in Arizona and is accused of assaulting his wife and refusing to talk to police for hours according to a report by NBC News.
Gray, 26, was taken into custody at 7 a.m. by officers in the Phoenix suburb of Goodyear, roughly nine hours after authorities responded to a 911 call from his wife, police said in a statement.
After Gray refused to speak with the officers, a SWAT team and crisis negotiators were dispatched to help. Gray was taken into custody without any incident.
According to jail records, he was arrested on suspicion of assault and disorderly conduct. It wasn’t immediately clear if he has a lawyer.
The woman who was assaulted had multiple visible injuries on her body and that she had said Gray had strangled her at one point, leading to her temporarily losing consciousness.
The woman was taken to the hospital where she was treated for her injuries and released.
Gray now faces charges including assault (domestic violence), aggravated assault (strangulation), and disorderly conduct. Following her hospital discharge, Gray’s wife is being assisted by Goodyear detectives and a victim advocate.
Gray, who played Hakeem Lyon on “Empire,” was born in Philadelphia and also raps under the name “Yazz the Greatest.”
Gray isn’t the only Empire cast-member facing legal troubles now.
Co-star Jussie Smollett has been charged with multiple felonies related to allegedly faking being the victim of a hate crime while living in Chicago in February 2019.
Smollett filed a police report claiming that he had been attacked by two men while walking on the street late at night, who used both racist and homophobic slurs while assaulting him. He then said that they tied a rope around his neck and splashed bleach on him.
Following an investigation, police said that the Smollett’s attackers were actually two Nigerian brothers that the actor had paid to attack him in an effort to boost his profile and TV series salary.
In February 2020, a grand jury indicted Smollett on six felony counts of disorderly conduct related to four false reports that he gave to police about the alleged attack. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
