Brooklyn-Born Rapper Is Arrested After Being Shot

The Brooklyn-born rapper known as Fabolous was shot early yesterday in a Manhattan parking lot and later arrested along with three members of his entourage when officers found two loaded guns in the car that the men fled in, the police said.

The rapper, whose legal name is John Jackson, was shot once in the right thigh sometime after midnight, after leaving Justin’s, a soul-food restaurant at 31 West 21st Street near Fifth Avenue owned by the hip-hop mogul Sean Combs.

Mr. Jackson, 28, and his companions apparently rode off in a white 2005 Dodge Magnum, the police said. Officers responding to 911 calls of gunshots fired saw the Magnum run a red light and pulled it over. Inside the car were two semiautomatic pistols, one with its serial number filed off, the police said.

Mr. Jackson, who was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center, was later released and taken to the 13th Precinct station house, where his three companions were already being questioned, the police said.

All four men denied any connection to the guns in the car, the police said. After being questioned, each was charged yesterday afternoon with criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a defaced weapon. The police identified the three other men as Kevin Bass, 18; Percell German, 23; and Rascharm Davis, 29, all of Brooklyn.

Mr. Jackson’s lawyer, Alberto Ebanks, said later yesterday that the Dodge Magnum in which the guns were found was not the car his client was riding in when he arrived at the restaurant, where the group watched a football game. He said that Mr. Jackson instead arrived in a Cadillac Escalade, but that he had jumped into the Magnum after he was shot.

“If any car had pulled up and offered him a ride to a local emergency room, he would have jumped in,” Mr. Ebanks said. “He was in the back seat bleeding profusely.”

Mr. Ebanks said the Magnum is registered to Ghetto Fabolous Inc., Mr. Jackson’s production company.

“Mr. Fabolous is simply the victim of a crime,” Mr. Ebanks said, adding that Mr. Jackson did not have a “beef” with anyone and that it was unclear yesterday whether he was the target of the shooting.

Justin’s, named after Mr. Combs’s son, draws professionals, athletes and other celebrities for Monday night football games projected on television screens, said a spokesman for the restaurant, Andre Suite.

Mr. Jackson, who collaborated with Mr. Combs on a remix of the song “Trade It All, Part II” released in 2002, frequented the restaurant, the spokesman said. Mr. Combs, who was not at his restaurant Monday evening, was at a party at Crobar held for the release of his album “Press Play.”

Mr. Suite said that there had been no argument inside Justin’s. According to Mr. Jackson and his companions, a gunman approached the men as they left and began shooting in the parking lot outside, the police said.

Mr. Jackson, raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, became famous in late 2001 with his debut single, “I Can’t Deny It.”