LAKELAND — The man who sang “Posed to be in Love” and “I Don’t Get Tired” is moving from concert stage to courtroom, now that the Lakeland Police Department has filed battery charges against him.
The charge: that video footage released on Aug. 30 shows rapper Kevin Gates kicking a women in the chest during a performance in Lakeland.
Lakeland Police completed their investigation of Gate, also known as Kevin Jerome Gilyard, 29, who lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The woman filed charges on Tuesday.
The rapper was performing at Rumors Night Club on Aug. 28. Lakeland Police say Miranda Dixon, 18, was in the crowd and standing in front of the stage.
“During Gilyard’s performance, Dixon reached onto the stage and touched Gilyard’s pants leg, then withdrew her hand,” noted Sergeant Terri Smith, public information officer for the Lakeland Police Department, in a news release about the case.
“Gilyard then turned and deliberately kicked Dixon in the stomach/chest area,” Smith added. “The kick was with such force that it pushed Dixon back into the crowd and caused her to lose consciousness for a brief period of time.”
The investigation by detectives “found that Dixon’s actions in touching the fabric of Gilyard’s pants did not rise to the level of a criminal offense,” Smith noted. “Gilyard’s action of kicking Dixon in the stomach was not as a result of self-defense and did rise to the level of a criminal offense.”
The kick, Smith added, was captured by cellphone video and the Rumors Night Club surveillance cameras, and led to a complaint affidavit charging Gates with simple battery. That complaint affidavit was forwarded this week to the State Attorney’s Office.
This was not Gates’ first brush with the law. He began making music in 2007 with fellow Louisiana natives Webbie and Lil Boosie, and released his first “Get in the Way,” in 2008, featuring Lil Boosie. Not long afterwards, Gates and Boosie were incarcerated in separate cases. Gates was released in 2011 and returned to recording music.
He also has a previous felony conviction of aggravated battery with a vehicle that happened in Chicago in 2014.
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