Flavor Flav Held Over Assault With Deadly Weapon

Reality TV star and former rapper Flavor Flav has been arrested after allegedly arguing with his fiancee and threatening to attack her teenage son with a knife.

The 53-year-old hip-hop icon, whose legal name is William Jonathan Drayton Jr, was taken into custody in the early hours of Wednesday morning from his home in Las Vegas, according to local police.

Officers did not report that anyone was injured.

Drayton faces a felony assault with a deadly weapon charge, carrying a possible penalty of up to six years in prison, and a misdemeanor battery-domestic violence charge, that could get him six months in a county jail.

He was being held on $23,000 (£14,000) bail at Clark County jail pending an initial court appearance on Thursday. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.

Drayton, whose public persona includes wearing a big clock on his chest, was an original member of the politically and socially militant rap group Public Enemy in the 1980s and '90s.

In recent years he has starred in several reality TV series and lent his name and recipes to short-lived chicken and soul food restaurants in Clinton, Iowa, and Las Vegas.

He has a criminal history that includes arrests and convictions on traffic infractions, a month in jail for assaulting his then-girlfriend in 1991, and three months in prison for shooting at a neighbour in New York in 1993.