50 Cent Shot at in Jersey
Shots were fired in the parking lot of a Jersey City Doubletree Hotel early yesterday morning as rapper 50 Cent (a.k.a. Curtis Jackson) and his entourage arrived.
The rapper fled to the hotel lobby and took cover a few minutes past midnight on Wednesday morning before returning to his SUV limousine and leaving the scene. No one was wounded in the shooting, and none of the shooters have been identified or apprehended.
According to Jersey City Police Department Sgt. Edgar Martinez, officers leaving roll call at midnight heard the shots, but due to the number of high rise buildings in the vicinity, police had difficulty locating the source of the shots. But staff at the Doubletree didn’t notify police of the incident until more than a half hour after shots were fired.
Ten bullet casings were found, seven for a .40-calibur handgun, three from a .45. One bullet shattered a window at the tire center of a BJ’s wholesale outlet 200 feet away. Jersey City police are reviewing a surveillance tape from the parking lot, and according to Sgt. Martinez, Police Chief Ronald Buonocore is giving the rapper and his crew five to seven days to come forward to be interviewed by authorities. “We’re not saying they did anything wrong, but they also failed to do something right,” Martinez says. “They should have stayed and called the police. People’s lives could have been at stake.”
Though no suspects have been cited, the police department did mention that 50 Cent rival Ja Rule was about a mile away at the time of the shooting, but according to sources, he was on the set of Cook Out, a Queen Latifah-produced film. Police wouldn’t speculate as to whether the investigation centered around the slaying last week of D.O. Cannon (real name Gerard Fields) — a Ja Rule labelmate at Murder Inc. Records — in Queens, New York.