LOS ANGELES — Toi-Lin Kelly has known Marion “Suge” Knight for 11 years, and says the former rap music mogul is nothing like the fearsome reputation associated with him from his heyday at the helm of the influential gangster rap label Death Row Records.

Knight, jailed on murder and attempted murder charges after he ran over two men with his pickup truck last year, is a caring father and devoted family man, who at age 51 remains a “momma’s boy,” says Kelly, who’s engaged to Knight and has a 6-year-old son with him.

“People forget that he’s human, and he has people who love him and has a family and a lot of people who root for him,” she told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview alongside Knight’s new legal team, J. Tooson and Jeremy Lessem. Knight himself is not permitted to speak publicly.

The session offered a preview of the defense of the former mogul, including a detailed account of the time leading up to a violent confrontation that ended when Knight ran over the two men, killing one, outside a Compton burger stand in January 2015.

It is the latest allegation of violence against Knight, a two-time convicted felon and inextricably linked to the violence of the 1990s rap scene.

Knight faces up to life in prison if convicted in the murder case, but Tooson and Lessem say he was fleeing an ambush and didn’t realize until later that he had run over and killed Terry Carter, a Compton businessman who was attempting to resolve a dispute between Knight and the makers of “Straight Outta Compton.”

The attorneys say Knight was expecting to have a meeting with Carter about receiving payment for the use of his likeness in last year’s highly successful biopic of the pioneering gangster rap group N.W.A.


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