WASHINGTON, June 27 (RIA Novosti) – Popular American singer Chris Brown has been charged with fleeing the scene of an accident after his car rear-ended a vehicle driven by a Russian model beauty queen in Los Angeles, US media reported this week.
Brown, who was convicted in 2009 of assaulting his pop-star girlfriend Rhianna, was charged Tuesday with a misdemeanor hit-and-run and driving without a valid license following an accident with a car driven by Olga Gure-Kovalenko, a model who won the Miss Russian LA beauty pageant this past March.
If convicted of leaving the scene of the May 21 accident, Brown, 24, could face up to one year in prison, The Associated Press (AP) reported. The charges were filed Tuesday, the AP cited a spokesman for the Los Angeles city attorney’s office as saying.
In a statement to police obtained by the US gossip website Celebuzz, Gure-Kovalenko said the Mercedes she was driving was rear-ended by a large black vehicle while she was waiting at a red light. She said she began arguing with the man driving the car and his female passenger after she took a picture of them because they refused to give the man’s license.
The man, who Gure-Kovalenko later learned was Brown, began cursing at her and upset her to the point that her blood pressure later spiked and left her feeling dizzy, she alleged in the police complaint.
Brown posted a message to his 12.7 million Twitter followers Tuesday that he gave Gure-Kovalenko the correct information following the accident and accused her of “thinking of a payday from Chris Brown.”
Gure-Kovalenko’s attorney told Celebuzz that his client is not seeking financial gain and that “she is not trying to make a big deal out of this.”
Gure-Kovalenko’s page on the Russian social-networking site Vkontakte indicates she attended a university in the Russian Far East city of Vladivostok and features photos of her modeling clothes, posing on the red carpet at the Academy Award Ceremony in Los Angeles and standing on stage alongside Hollywood stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Charlize Theron at this year’s annual awards ceremony held by GLAAD, an advocacy group for sexual minorities.
