Police Seek Motive in Shooting That Injured Rapper’s Bodyguard

Los Angeles police were investigating several possible motives for an incident in which Snoop Dogg’s motorcade was fired on, wounding one of the rapper-actor’s bodyguards, authorities said Friday.

Los Angeles police spokesman Sgt. John Pasquariello said it is still unclear whether the shooting was prompted by an argument or tied to some larger, ongoing feud.

“It could be a variety of things. It could have been random, it could have been from an earlier argument or violence associated with the rap industry,” Pasquariello said. “We just don’t know.”

The injured man, identified as a 43-year-old Inglewood reserve school police officer, was treated and released from Kaiser Foundation Hospital in West Los Angeles after the 9 p.m. Thursday shooting on Fairfax Avenue near Washington Boulevard.

Snoop Dogg’s entourage was about to get on the freeway to head to the rapper’s Diamond Bar home when a group of men in a dark-colored sedan sprayed at least three vehicles with bullets, witnesses told police.

Detectives for the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division interviewed at least nine men, including Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus. They were cooperative, police said.

At least five men in the Broadus security detail were identified as reserve police officers with the Inglewood Unified School District, Pasquariello said.

A sixth, who worked for Inglewood schools full time, was on disability and two others were state parole agents.

“The LAPD is conducting the investigation,” said Inglewood Unified School District Police Chief Albert Vasquez. “And at this point, they’re victims so I’m not going to make any type of move that would appear disciplinary or punitive in nature.”

Inglewood police have had problems with off-duty work.

An off-duty Inglewood officer was working security for Notorious B.I.G. in 1996 when the rapper was shot in front of hundreds of party-goers outside the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Boulevard near Fairfax Avenue.

At the time, law enforcement sources said the officer was one of six Inglewood officers who violated department policy by working off-duty the night of the shooting as security for the 24-year-old rapper, whose real name was Christopher Wallace.

Broadus also has had his share of scrapes with the law. Snoop Dogg was acquitted along with bodyguard McKinley Lee in the 1993 shooting death of a gang member. Broadus and Lee testified the shooting was in self-defense.