Chris Brown Won't Face Criminal Action in Alleged Phone Snatching: Prosecutors

The Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office said it has declined to seek a warrant for robbery by sudden snatching

The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office said Friday that it will not take any criminal action regarding the alleged phone-snatching incident involving singer Chris Brown.

Prosecutors said they declined to seek a warrant for robbery by sudden snatching for the Feb. 19 incident in Miami Beach.

“The Miami Beach Police Department and my prosecutors have reviewed all of the evidence and taken the statements of numerous witnesses, many of whom were interviewed in California, and have determined we are not taking any type of criminal action regarding the incident," State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement. "We have forwarded our findings to Los Angeles for the probation case review after conducting the same process that every criminal case in Miami-Dade County undergoes.”

Miami Police said previously that Brown took a fan's white $500 iPhone 4S after she took a photo while he was sitting in his Bentley outside the Cameo nightclub at 1445 Washington Ave.

He emphatically told Christal Spann that she would not post his picture “on no website,” according to police.

The incident took place during the wee hours Feb. 19 after Brown and rapper Tyga, whose real name is Michael Stevenson, left the nightclub after they performed. There were between 20 and 30 people, most of them women, near Brown's vehicle at the time, and the numerous flashing cameras created "a strobe light effect," according to the State Attorney's Office's closeout memorandum.

Spann said that she and childhood friend Kieshandrya Lawson got a photo with Stevenson and then went across the street to Brown's "Bentley" – which was actually a 550 Benz limousine, the vehicle’s driver said.

Spann said that as her phone camera flashed, Brown reached through the window, grabbed the phone and told her off.

Lawson also tried to snap a photo of the singer but the front seat passenger took her phone before the limousine windows went up, Spann and Lawson said. But no other witnesses corroborated the second phone snatching, according to the memo.

Both women beat on the windows demanding their phones back, and eventually, as they ran beside the limo, the front passenger cracked the window and said, "We threw your phone long time ago. Your phone is far from here," according to Spann. But she said that she saw a girl in the back scrolling through a phone before the limo drove off.

Spann's iPhone was found in the backpack of Stevenson’s head of security, Devon Blanche, on a tour bus at the W Hotel in Fort Lauderdale on Feb. 22, the memo said.

Blanche said that he saw Brown throw the phone from his limousine and heard him say "F--- this phone." He retrieved the phone, asked if anyone else in the entourage had lost it, and said he took it with him as their trip continued on to Orlando, intending to see if he could find the owner when he returned to South Florida, Blanche said.

Brown's then-girlfriend, model Karrueche Tran, said that she was sitting in the back of the limo with Brown and Seiko Huffman when a woman stuck her arm through the back seat window and hit her in the front of the head with the device, according to the memo.

Everyone in the limo except for Tran testified that after the fan leaned into the back of the limo to take a photo, Brown took her phone and tossed it out through the opposite passenger window. They also heard him say that he'd thrown it from the vehicle, the memo said.

Both Stevenson and his head of security, Blanche, noted Brown's concerns about the photos that are taken of him. Blanche told a detective that Brown may have taken the phone "because Brown is known to be especially concerned that if photographs of himself with two females got out, it might cause him problems with Rihanna," the memo said.

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The memo concluded that "there is considerable circumstantial and testimonial evidence that it was not Brown’s purpose to take Spann’s property with the intention of depriving her of her property," which is what a robbery by sudden snatching means.

"No one disputes Brown took the iPhone and tossed it from the limousine," but there is no probable cause to issue a warrant for the charge, the memo concluded.

It said that Spann is no longer a fan of Brown's.

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