Fat Joe Sought as Murder Witness

Josh Grossberg Wed May 30, 12:41 PM ET

Los Angeles (E! Online) - Authorities in Miami are seeking to interview Fat Joe as a possible eyewitness in the Memorial Day shooting deaths of two outside a South Beach eatery.

According to police, Joe, aka Jose Cartagena. may have been sitting in a Cadillac Escalade with several other people outside the Cuban restaurant David's Café II around 6 a.m., when members of his crew got into a "verbal altercation" with another group . The spat quickly escalated into a fight with both sides punching and kicking each other.

Jermaine "Wufgang" Chamberline, 24, pulled a gun and fired four slugs into Joe's group, per the incident report. One slug struck 25-year-old Lessli Paz, who died on the sidewalk, while 26-year-old Joey Navarro was hit three times and died at a hospital.

Officers on the scene reportedly held four men for questioning after they initially claimed to be friends of the victims, but then refused to offer up details about the shooting, police said.

Eventually, there was a break in the case when one of the officers spotted Chamberline, a doorman at a nearby apartment building, hanging near the crime scene. Police detained him and during questioning he reportedly broke down and confessed to the killings. He was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon (he was on probation for a previous burglary conviction). He remains jailed after bail was denied.

"If it weren't for that stop, we probably would never have solved this crime," Miami Beach police spokesman Bobby Hernandez told the Miami Herald. "We weren't getting any cooperation from the victim's so-called friends."

It's not known if Fat Joe was one of the quartet asked to give a witness account. But Hernandez said detectives thought the rapper could be helpful in their investigation because he was believed to be an acquaintance of the deceased men.

This isn't the first time Joe has supposedly been sought for questioning about a murder.

The "Get It Poppin' " rapper was also at the scene of a 1994 killing of a teenager outside a social club that remained unsolved for nearly a decade until one of Joe's former bodyguards, Ernesto Rivera, was arrested in September 2004. The New York Times reported that the emcee heard the shooting and saw people fleeing and had cooperated with investigators in that case, although his lawyers denied he was an eyewitness.

Calls to Fat Joe's rep, Aimee Morris, seeking comment were not returned.

The rap star's next studio album, My World, a follow-up to 2006's Me, Myself & I, is expected to drop this summer.