Sep. 7, 2004 – Chicago rapper Twista, known for hits such as “Slow Jamz” and “So Sexy,” was hurt in a van crash that killed a member of his security staff, state police said.
Twista, whose real name is Carl Mitchell, was treated and released from a hospital in Erie after the van in which he was riding veered off Interstate 90 just after 4 a.m. Monday and rolled over in the median, police said.
Another man in the van, Arthur Dixon of Chicago, died after he was taken to a hospital, authorities said. Five other men in the van were hurt, none seriously, police and hospital officials said.
The van was headed from Syracuse, N.Y., to Chicago when the crash happened, said Erie County Coroner Lyell Cook.
Police were investigating how the van veered off the road in a construction zone and into the median, where it rolled over.
A decision on whether to file charges won’t be made until at least Wednesday, said county District Attorney Brad Foulk, who declined to say what caused the accident.
“It’s a miracle that any of them survived because all of them, except for the driver, were ejected onto the medial strip,” Foulk said.
The driver, identified by police as Otis Bankhead of Chicago, was the only person in the vehicle wearing a seat belt, Foulk said.
Mitchell, 30, was originally known as Tung Twista and was listed in Guinness World Records in 1992 as the fastest rapper in the world. His “So Sexy” was eighth on Billboard’s latest list of hot rap tracks; “Slow Jamz” went to No. 1 on the Billboard chart earlier this year, and the album “Kamikaze” sold more than a million copies.
Twista had been scheduled to appear in Albany, N.Y., on Monday, but the show was canceled so another rapper on the bill, LL Cool J, could be with his wife after surgery, according to the Web site for Albany’s Pepsi Arena.