A WEEK after a warrant was issued for his arrest, embattled Jamaica-born Florida-based dancehall deejay Deva Bratt is yet to turn himself in.
Deva Bratt, whose given name is Sheldon Owen Smith, was ordered arrested for failure to appear in the Palm Beach County Circuit Court on a traffic violation, last Monday.
It is alleged he was driving without a licence.
“The warrant’s still active and in order to satisfy it, he has to turn himself in,” Javier Angell, Palm Beach County’s Clerk Office representative, told the Jamaica Observer.
Angell said no bond has been set.
“I don’t know how long they will hold him, but once arrested, he has to face the judge who will decide whether he gets bail,” he continued.
Several calls to the deejay’s court-appointed public defender, Daniel Lewin, went unanswered.
Deva Bratt’s latest run-in with the law is one is series occurring both in the United States and in Jamaica.
Last April, the deejay had his battery case in Boca Raton, Florida, dismissed due to an “uncooperative victim”. Battery is an intentional unpermitted act causing harmful or offensive contact with another person.
In 2008, he was before the Jamaican court on a carnal abuse charge involving a minor. He was later acquitted.
Four years later, the entertainer was again at the centre of another high-profile case. He was charged with indecent assault and assault occasioning bodily harm of two females in the Spanish Town Resident Magistrate Court in St Catherine. He also got off on those charges.
A reputed founding member of the Vybz Kartel-led Portmore Empire, Deva Bratt is known for songs including Another Night, Paper Chase, and Dart Them Heart, featuring I-Wayne.
– By Brian Bonitto
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