A member of the rap group Insane Clown Posse and one of the group's security guards were arrested and charged with assaulting an NAU student Monday afternoon outside a local hair salon.
Matthew Wedemeyer, a freshman advertising major, was checking on haircut prices with a friend at the London Underground salon on San Francisco Street. Several members of the ICP, including Joseph Frank Bruce, known as Violent J, were getting their hair styled and signing comic books for salon employees. The group was visiting Flagstaff from Phoenix, where they had a concert the following night.
"I asked if they were ICP," Wedemeyer said in an interview with The Lumberjack, "and they said no. I said 'good, 'cause they suck.'" Wedemeyer then left the salon with his friend, 19-year-old Richard Sica, but witnesses said Bruce and two other men followed him across the street.
"He and his posse followed me across the street and started to get tough," Wedemeyer said. "Violent J grabbed my jacket and my hair, threw me to the ground and said I was going to get 'bitched.'"
Sica said members of the group also stomped on Wedemeyer's head.
Several witnesses told police they had seen Bruce throw the first punch and that he was the main instigator in the assault.