TV Actor Jailed After He Allegedly Shot Man

Actor Todd Bridges, who portrayed the older brother on the “Diff’rent Strokes” television series, was in the Parker Center jail Friday after he allegedly shot and wounded another man in a South-Central Los Angeles house identified by police as a drug hangout.

Officers said the 23-year-old Bridges and a companion, Harvey Duckett, 30, were arrested Thursday night a short distance from the house in the 300 block of West 65th Street where Kenneth Clay, 25, was shot at least five times.

It was Bridges’ second arrest in as many weeks at the same location.

On Jan. 25, Bridges was arrested on suspicion of possessing cocaine at the house, where there have been numerous drug incidents, said Officer Bill Frio, a Police Department spokesman.

At Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, where he was in serious but stable condition, Clay told Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums detectives that Bridges did the shooting, officials reported.

Clay was struck twice in his right shoulder, once under the left armpit, in the upper lip and in the right side of his neck, police said.

Detectives said that he told them he was taking care of the vacant house and that he went there when neighbors reported “burglars.” Police said he apparently found Bridges and Duckett, argued with them and was shot.

Officers said that the pair fled but that Clay furnished a description of their automobile. Newton anti-gang officers took them into custody a short time later. Newton Division Sgt. Doug Tantee said police also seized a .22-caliber handgun and a shotgun.

The actor, who played the part of Gary Coleman’s older brother on “Diff’rent Strokes” from 1978 to 1986, has had trouble with the law for several years.

In 1983, he was arrested by Beverly Hills police for carrying a loaded, concealed .45-caliber handgun in his car. He pleaded guilty, was fined $240 and placed on one-year probation.

In 1986, he was sentenced to a year in jail for making a bomb threat against a San Fernando Valley car customizer with whom he had argued over the latter’s demands for payment in advance because several of the actor’s checks had bounced. A homemade pipe bomb went off in a car owned by the other man.

Bridges was originally charged with possessing explosives with intent to injure or intimidate but pleaded guilty to the lesser bomb-threat charge on the grounds that a trial would hurt his career.

The year in jail was suspended pending psychiatric treatment. Bridges was put on three-years’ probation, fined $2,500 and ordered to make $6,000 restitution.

At that time, he told the judge that he “had trouble handling all the pressure” of fame and his parents’ divorce.

A year ago, Bridges was arrested for reckless driving in Northridge when, officers said, they found him going 80 m.p.h.. Two days earlier, according to police, Bridges’ family told them that he was suicidal and possibly armed.

Bridges began acting at the age of 6. He was Loomis on the “Fish” television series in 1977 and 1978, then went on to do “Diff’rent Strokes.”

On Friday, he and Duckett were being held without bail.