Attempting to Recap Katt Williams’ Epic Meltdown

A High-Speed Tricycle Chase and a $300K Pirate Ship: Katt Williams’ Crazy Week

Not many people are covering the insane meltdown that Katt Williams has been having for the past few weeks, I suspect because there’s just too much to cover. I almost broke my browser trying to keep track of it all. But by God, any story that involves a guy attempting to pay cash for a state ferry and going on a high-speed tricycle chase is a story that deserves to be told. I’m going to go in chronological order here, so bear with me, because a lot of the best stuff is at the end.

• In October, Williams pulled a gun on Faizon Love (yes, the fat guy from Blue Crush), supposedly after an argument over $50 grand that Williams owes, which ended with Williams getting arrested.

• Separate from that incident, Williams was arrested for battery outside a nightclub in Oakland. An altercation that apparently began when Williams assaulted 18-year-old “aspiring rapper” Delvahn Mosley-Davis on board Williams’ tour bus.

• Williams was in town for his shows at the Coliseum formerly known as the Oakland Coliseum, and two days after the battery arrest, Williams abruptly left the stage ten minutes into a show. He later got sued by multiple angry fans. MONEY QUOTE: “The suit filed by 35-year-old Brian Herline, of Modesto, says he and hundreds of fans were disappointed when Williams took off his clothes and challenged people to fight.”

• Following that incident, Katt Williams showed up in Sacramento, where he was driving some sort of three-wheeled motorcycle called a Can Am on sidewalks and almost hitting people. Cops were called, Katt Williams told them he wasn’t going to stop, before leading them on a brief, high-speed tricycle chase (seriously), with Williams running several red lights until cops eventually gave up to avoid endangering the general public.

• Did I mention he slapped a kid at Target and it was captured on video?

• You have to give him this, that was a slap fit for a pimp. Williams was charged with battery in the wake of the incident

• The kid Katt Williams slapped, Forrest Liebenberg, who in Williams’ defense does seem rather slappable, says he was fired from Target the next day, and is considering legal action.

Forrest said his run-in with Williams started when Williams tried to buy his personal motorcycle helmet

[maybe because the cops were chasing him and he was trying to disguise himself as that OTHER guy on a fancy street snowmobile?]

“He’s just really aggressive, you know, making cynical comments, just based on the fact that I put thought into selling him my helmet,” he said.
The 19-year-old security staffer thought it was over until he saw Williams a second time.
“He approached me, the argument got escalated, and that’s when he hit me,” he said.

• After his two incidents in Sacramento, Katt Williams moved north, to Seattle. He had a show on Friday, where he hit a guy in the head with a microphone during the show, and afterwards, assaulted fans asking for autographs: “The fans claimed Williams had attacked them after they tried to take a photo with him after the show. However, Williams claimed the fans had forced their way into his dressing room, and denied assaulting anyone.”

• Two days later, he got into a fight at a sports bar and got arrested.

“During the incident Williams exchanged words with patrons in the bar, brandished a pool cue at a bar manager and refused to leave the business,” Spagenthal-Lee said. “At one point during the altercation, Williams followed a family outside of the bar where, as the family got into their car, Williams flicked a cigarette through a car window at a woman, striking her just below her eye.

“Williams also threw a rock at the family’s car.”

• Suge Knight posted Williams’ bail. Which is good, I can’t imagine taking money from Suge Knight would come with any pre-conditions.

• Williams then showed up on KOMO news Tuesday, when they caught up with him as he was getting kicked out of his fourth Seattle hotel. Wearing a Kurt Cobain shirt, a beaded necklace, and ski goggles around his neck, Williams announced his retirement from stand-up comedy.

• Williams told the videographer that he was offering $301,000 cash to buy a Washington State Ferry for his family to stay in while they awaited his court date.

“If they will accept our bid… I will take me and my whole staff on that boat because I still have a court date four days from now and can’t leave and I’ve been kicked out of four hotels in two days and I’ve been arrested by three different sets of officers four different times detained by two sets of officers,” he said. “I can stay there [on the ferry] and my family can be there and my dogs can be there and my whole staff can be there until we get done suing Seattle for this $50 million that I want for crippling my reputation as a father and a black man and as a taxpaying citizen and as a person who is not a convicted felon.”

• Well, you gotta spend money to make money, I guess. No word on whether Williams actually succeeded in buying a ferry and attempting to become a high-seas outlaw (doubtful), but he did pull a no-show at the hearing he was in town waiting for.

Williams’ attorney, Thomas McAllister, told the judge his client was under the impression that he did not have to appear at the arraignment and has returned to California, where he lives. McAllister said that Williams read a Seattle Times story earlier this week in which a spokeswoman for the City Attorney’s Office mistakenly said that he did not have to appear if an attorney was in court on his behalf.
Municipal Court Judge Willie Gregory rescheduled the arraignment for Wednesday, saying that Williams received “misleading” information.
Later Thursday, Williams was charged with three misdemeanor counts of fourth-degree assault stemming from two incidents in Seattle last weekend.

• Oh, and now the microphone guy is suing.

Also Thursday, Carlos Castro-Lino, the man Williams is accused of striking with a microphone, filed a lawsuit against the comedian and Seattle Theatre Group (STG), the organization that runs the Paramount Theatre.
Castro-Lino, of Kent, said he was seated in the third row when Williams walked off the stage and into the audience. Williams, according to the suit, positioned himself behind the man and “without warning” struck him in the back of his head with his microphone.
“One witness described the assault as a baseball swing,” the lawsuit said.
After striking Castro-Lino, Williams returned to the stage and told the man that he should “go home and get a gun” because Williams would arm himself and be waiting for him to return, according to the suit.

Keep in mind, those last couple bullet points are all from yesterday, so God only knows what today will bring. Naked machete fight? Cat-throwing incident? Assaulting aquarium animals with a broken hookah? Your guess is as good as mine. Katt Williams is a great comic, and having seen for myself the strange effect Dave Chappelle has on people where they see him on stage in front of thousands and still talk at him as if he’s sitting across from them in their living room, I can only imagine how weird and alienating it must be to be as famous as Katt Williams and the effect that has on a person. Among his demo, he’s rock-star level for sure. But even so, the week he’s having, it makes Axl Rose look like the dude from Coldplay.