The police report behind Thursday’s Rick Ross arrest describes a violent morning at his Star Island home, and the rapper’s own Instagram account added a strange postscript the day after.
Ross, whose legal name is William Leonard Roberts II, surrendered to Miami Beach police and was booked into Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center at 6:10 a.m. He faces a felony charge of battery by strangulation and a misdemeanor battery charge, both listed as domestic violence. He declined to give police a statement on the advice of his lawyers. Bond was set at $5,000 on the strangulation charge and $1,000 on the battery charge. He has pleaded not guilty, and his arraignment is set for October 22.
The Rick Ross arrest report does not name the woman. She told police she had been in a relationship with Ross for about a year and was living with him. She went to police on September 29 to report what happened on August 28.
She told officers she was asleep that morning when Ross woke her up, enraged because she had been tagged in a photo on Instagram. He questioned her about lying to him and slapped her in the face. He then accused her of being in a relationship with a man she says was only a friend. According to the report, he followed her through the house and hit her every time she denied it, including several blows to the chest.
The strangulation charge comes from what she described next. The report says Ross choked her until she could not breathe by grabbing the collar of the hoodie she was wearing and twisting it. She told police he grabbed her by the ponytail and slammed her against a wall. Then he struck her in the face while she was bent over, leaving her with a busted lip. He pushed her to the bathroom floor and turned on the shower to spray her with the shower head.
She managed to get out of the bathroom and leave the house, but she went back inside. After Ross left, she gathered her belongings and left for good. She gave police photos of her injuries with time stamps that line up with that morning. Detectives were also told about possible video footage connected to the incident.
The Rick Ross arrest report includes one more detail. The woman told police she contacted a friend to come pick her up at the house, and that friend was turned away. The report does not say who turned the friend away. It does note that Ross posted a picture of the friend arriving on his Instagram.
Ross shared the post to his story on August 29th on the richforever account the day after the alleged attack. It shows what appears to be security camera footage of a woman sitting in a car outside the home. Over the image, Ross wrote “When u see this face, you know it’s bad,” followed by laughing and crying emojis. A “Warning” sticker sits across the frame.
Ross’s attorneys, Steve Sadow and Bradley Horenstein, say he is innocent. In a statement, they called the woman an ex whose motivations are unclear. They also pointed out that she waited a month before going to police.
