R KELLY’S manager Donnell Russell has been arrested on charges that he threatened to shoot up a movie theater to stop a screening of a documentary that explored sexual abuse allegations against the singer.
Russell’s arrest comes days after he and two other pals of Kelly were charged with trying to bribe or intimidate other alleged sex crime victims of the singer.
The latest charges against Russell, 45, allege that the manager/adviser got a Manhattan movie theater – NeueHouse Madison Square – to cancel a screening of the docu-series Surviving R Kelly by threatening gun violence.
He apparently contacted a theater employee directly from his landline in Chicago, according to a complaint, “to threaten that there was a person in the theater with a gun prepared to shoot up” the screening.
The theater canceled the showing after the violent threat.
He’s facing conspiracy and threatening physical harm by interstate communication charges.
He appeared remotely from Los Angeles before a Manhattan judge on Friday and was permitted to remain free on $75,000 bail, according to The Associated Press.
Earlier this week, Russell was charged alongside Michael Williams, 37, and Richard Arline Jr., 31, according to criminal complaints unsealed Wednesday by the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
Russell was charged with harassing a Kelly victim and her mother after the woman filed a lawsuit against the singer. He is accused of sending a letter to her lawyer with cropped nude photos of her, and later warning her, “Pull the plug or you will be exposed.”
Williams is accused of setting fire to a car outside a Florida home a different alleged Kelly victim was staying in.
He also allegedly conducted internet searches for “the detonation properties of fertilizer and diesel fuel, witness intimidation and witness tampering and countries that do not have extradition with the United States,” authorities said in a news release.
Arline Jr., a longtime friend of Kelly, is accused of offering to pay off a woman he believed had “too much” incriminating information against the singer.
Kelly himself remains jailed in Chicago after pleading not guilty to dozens of state and federal sex crime charges in Illinois, Minnesota and New York.
Those charges range from sexual assault to leading a racketeering scheme aimed at supplying girls.
The singer is also accused of having unprotected sex with a minor in 2015 without disclosing that he had herpes.
