More than two years after the highway gun battle that resulted in the death of T.I.'s childhood friend and assistant, Philant Johnson, police have arrested two Cincinnati brothers they accuse of being the triggermen in the assault.
Hosea Thomas, 34, and Padron Thomas, 40, have been charged with murder and felonious assault in the May 3, 2006, incident, which killed Johnson, 26, and wounded three others, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
T.I. (born Clifford Harris), had performed a gig at the Cincinnati club Bogart's on the night of the incident. Several witnesses told the paper that tensions had mounted in the club after T.I.'s crew threw money into the audience from the stage. Police say that the Thomas brothers were present at an afterparty held at the Club Ritz, where they were allegedly involved in a series of altercations with the Atlanta rapper's entourage. Cincinnati Homicide Detective Tim Gormly told the paper that the suspects wanted to join T.I. and his group in the club's VIP area, but they were denied entrance. At some point in the night, one of the Thomas brothers was hit in the head with a bottle, Gormly said.
T.I. and his crew left the club in a pair of vans and were followed by two SUVs, police said. At 3:30 a.m. near a highway ramp close to the club, the men in the SUVs began opening fire on the rapper's entourage, killing Johnson — a lifelong friend of T.I.'s — wounding the others and causing slight injuries to T.I. from flying glass.
"It was just a total accumulation of everything that happened that night," Gormly said.
Hosea Thomas, whose past criminal history includes convictions for drug possession and trafficking, was arrested in the Johnson shooting on Wednesday and is being held without bond. Padron Thomas, a listed sex offender who was previously convicted of robbery and rape, is in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service for an unrelated drug case, the Enquirer reported. Each brother was charged with murder and seven counts of felonious assault — one for each person in the vehicles. Hosea Thomas was also charged with having weapons despite a previous conviction, and Padron Thomas was charged with tampering with evidence.
Police said solving the case was difficult because the shooting happened in a moving car and there weren't many witnesses who actually saw the shots fired. Even after identifying the Thomas brothers, it took months before there was sufficient evidence to charge them, Gormly told the paper.
Johnson's family has been calling police often, looking for answers since his death. Gormly said he was glad to be able to call Johnson's mother Wednesday night with good news. "A family that keeps in touch over two years, you know they really care for Philant," he said. "So, yeah, it feels good to give them the news."
T.I., who gave the eulogy at Johnson's funeral, recently told MTV News that his arrest last year on charges of illegally attempting to purchase machine guns and silencers was, in some ways, tied to the shooting of his friend.
As part of his community service, the rapper has been telling kids not to get too caught up in the emotions of the moment. "I've experienced it. All that forward-thinking and transitioning from one area of life to another area of life — all that was flipped upside down and scrambled all the way up after Philant died in Cincinnati," he said. "Everything was, like, 'OK. I thought I had everything under control. Now, obviously, this new person I've become has cost my homeboy his life.' It caused me to think differently in certain ways, and in hindsight, I can say I was sadly mistaken."
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