R. Kelly’s Former Manager Receives 1 Year in Prison for Shooting Threat
Written by SOURCE on December 21, 2022
Donnell Russell, a former manager of R. Kelly, has been sentenced to one year in prison for calling in a shooter threat at the premiere of the disgraced R&B singer’s Lifetime documentary Surviving R. Kelly.
CBS New reports Russell will serve the sentence concurrently with another 20-month term he received for making threats to one of Kelly’s victims. Russell will also pay a $10,000 fine.
While receiving his sentence in a Manhattan court room on Monday, Russell told a federal judge he “made bad judgments” while serving as Kelly’s manager. “I’m not a horrible person,” he said.
Russell’s latest sentencing stems from an active-shooter threat that took place four years ago. Lifetime had been set to premiere Surviving R. Kelly on Dec. 4, 2018, at New York City’s NeueHouse Madison Square. The screening was called off just several minutes into the documentary, after Russell called the theater from a Chicago landline and told a NeueHouse employee that he “was going to shoot up the place.”
According to prosecutors this “terrifying interstate threat to sabotage the event” came after Russell posed as a lawyer and sent a cease-and-desist letter to Lifetime, while also calling the New York police and fire departments in the lead-up to the premiere of Surviving R. Kelly.
“We all evacuated in sheer pandemonium. It was total chaos in that theater,” a witness said. “The victims were screaming, crying, not knowing which way to go.”
Russell, 47, is scheduled to turn himself in early next year, and will serve both sentences simultaneously.
Kelly is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.
