Former NBA star Shawn Kemp charged with 1st-degree assault in parking lot shooting

Prosecutors in Washington state charged former NBA star Shawn Kemp on Friday with first-degree assault in a parking lot shooting last month over a stolen cellphone, saying that in a text message just before the shooting, Kemp wrote, "I'm about to shoot this [expletive]."

Kemp was arrested after the shooting outside the Tacoma Mall on March 8. No one was injured, and Kemp's lawyers have insisted he returned fire in self-defence after tracking and trying to retrieve a cell phone that had been stolen from him earlier that day.

One, Tim Leary, did not immediately return a text message seeking comment on the charge.

A probable cause statement by Tacoma police, filed in Pierce County Superior Court on Friday, did not indicate Kemp was shot at. It said some of his statements were not corroborated by surveillance video, and that the text message sent just 13 minutes before he arrived at the mall showed his intent.

The probable cause document said Kemp told police that after being shot at he went back to his own vehicle, parked several spots away, to get his own gun. But the video showed that he was armed with the weapon when he approached the parked Toyota 4Runner where he had tracked his phone.

According to the statement, Kemp tracked his phone to a Toyota 4Runner sport-utility vehicle that was parked near a JCPenney department store. He parked his own car, a Porsche, several spots away, grabbed a handgun out of a backpack and approached the 4Runner, the statement said.

The statement said he fired three times into the Toyota and then threw his gun into some bushes. The driver of the 4Runner appeared to duck one of the shots and eventually drove off, it said. Only about five minutes elapsed from the time Kemp arrived until the