One of the suspects in the alleged attack on “Empire” star Jussie Smollett was previously arrested in Chicago for attempted murder, a report said Friday.
The man was busted in 2011 for a stabbing in the north Chicago neighborhood near where authorities raided a house Wednesday night and confiscated items related to the Smollett case, according to The Chicago Sun-Times.
He struck a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to aggravated harassment for the 2011 attack, the paper said.
The sentence was two years probation and the man was ordered to pay a $674 fine, the paper said.
The suspect and his brother were arrested on Wednesday at O’Hare International Airport for the Smollett attack after returning from Nigeria. At least one of them worked on “Empire,” reports said.
Their involvement in the attack was not immediately clear, but detectives were questioning them Friday.
Smollett says he was on the phone with his manager, Brandon Z. Moore, and walking home from a Subway restaurant in Chicago at 2 a.m. Jan. 29 when he was accosted by two people who shouted racial slurs, tied a noose around his neck and doused him with a “chemical substance” resembling bleach.