Justice has been served for Dave Chappelle. The man who attacked the comedian onstage at the Hollywood Bowl has to sit in jail for nine months.
According to the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, a California judge sentenced Chappelle’s assailant, 24-year-old Isaiah Lee, on Thursday (Dec. 15) to 270 days in Los Angeles County jail. Lee pled no contest to a pair of misdemeanor counts: Entering a restricted area during a live event and battery.
TMZ reported on May 3 that Lee ran onstage at the Hollywood Bowl and ambushed Chappelle in the middle of his set for “Netflix is a Joke: The Festival.” The publication said that Lee evaded security and tackled the comedian to the ground. Chappelle wasn’t harmed much, as Jamie Foxx and Busta Rhymes came to his defense.
After Lee’s attack on Chappelle, he rushed off stage, where security pummeled him before cops arrested him.
Police then discovered Lee carried a weapon that resembled a gun with a knife blade at the time, but sources said he did not use it during the assault.
The weapon would later be destroyed, according to the City Attorney’s Office, but L.A. County D.A. George Gascon received backlash for not charging Lee with a felony. Instead, the L.A. City Attorney ultimately charged him with four misdemeanors, which he plead no contest to.
Allegedly, the man’s attempted to harm Chappelle wasn’t random. Weeks later, Lee did an in-jail interview with the New York Post, and he revealed that he is bisexual and the reasoning for his attack on Chappelle stemmed from jokes made against the LGBT community.
Along with his jail sentence, Lee is facing additional charges for attempted murder in a separate incident, where he allegedly stabbed his roommate in December 2021. The case is still pending and he is being held on $1 million bond.