Celebrity couple charged after nightclub shooting

One of the American entertainment industry's most street-smart couples was arrested and charged with firearms offences in New York last night after a shooting incident in a Manhattan nightclub which left three people wounded.

The record producer and millionaire rapper Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs and his film star and singer girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, were detained after a gun was found in their car as they left a Times Square area nightclub in the early hours of yesterday morning.

The couple were both charged with criminal possession of stolen property, New York police commissioner Howard Safir said at a news conference. Police arrested and questioned the couple after eyewitness claims that Combs fired a gun after a dispute at Club NY. A third person, Jamal Barrow, a small-time rapper known as Shine, was arrested and charged with criminal possession of a gun, police said.

Two men and a woman suffered injuries in the incident. The woman was shot in the face and was in stable condition at New York's St Clare's hospital, as was one of the men, who was shot in the shoulder. The third victim, who was also shot in the shoulder, was in stable condition at Bellevue hospital. The couple, travelling with a a driver and bodyguard, were stopped in their jeep shortly after the shooting at around 2.30am, police said.

The vehicle was stopped because it was fleeing the scene and because it jumped a set of red lights, police spokesman John Giammarino said. A gun was found lying in the car "in full view", reports said. The weapon was identified as one which had been reported stolen in Georgia. None of the four occupants of the car had a licence for the gun.

A run-in with the police is something new for Lopez, who was born in the Bronx of Puerto Rican descent and is one of the biggest movie and record stars of 1999 with her On the 6 album and her role in Out of Sight, in which she starred with George Clooney. But it is all too familiar for the black rap musician and record producer Combs, who has evolved into one of the most commercially astute entrepreneurs of the hiphop movement. Combs, 30, won two Grammys and earned an estimated $53.5m (£33.4m) during the past year.

The New York-based label he records for, Bad Boy Records, was involved in one of the most lethal hostilities in the music industry this decade with the rival Los Angeles-based Death Row Records and his private life is littered with confrontations with fellow musicians and the law. In 1996, one of Death Row's top rappers, Tupac Shakur, was shot dead in the feud. The following year, Combs's protege, Notorious B.I.G, also known to his fans as Biggie Smalls, was in turn slaughtered in what was seen in the music industry as a tit-for-tat killing.

After Notorious B.I.G's death, Combs penned the song I'll Be Missing You. Earlier this year, Combs was arrested for allegedly beating a record industry executive, Steven Stoute, after taking offence at the way he was portrayed in a video released by Mr Stoute. Mr Stoute said Combs was one of three men who left him with a broken arm, broken jaw and head wounds in the attack. Combs was originally charged with assault but pleaded guilty to harassment and was ordered to undergo counselling.

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