Panic! at the Disco founding member arrested in Las Vegas
The original bassist for Panic! at the Disco was arrested last month in Las Vegas on drug and weapons charges, according to police records.
Brent Wilson, 33, was booked in the early hours of Jan. 23 into the Clark County Detention Center. He is charged with three counts of possession of narcotics and one count of possession of a gun by a prohibited person.
Wilson was a founding member of Panic! at the Disco and played with the Las Vegas-born band through 2006.
He remained in custody at the downtown Las Vegas jail on Friday, custody records show, as he awaits a preliminary hearing in the case set for Wednesday morning.
Defense attorney Dustin Marcello, who is representing Wilson, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he was “working hard toward a resolution” and declined to further comment.
According to his arrest report, he was pulled over on the evening of Jan. 22 after he had driven across three lanes of traffic without using a turn signal, failing to yield to oncoming traffic near Sahara Avenue and Fort Apache Road.
A Las Vegas police officer who happened to be in the area at the time was forced “to hit my brakes in order to avoid a collision,” the officer wrote in the report.
During the traffic stop, the report states, officers identified the driver as Wilson, a felon on probation and in violation of his curfew.
Court records show Wilson pleaded guilty in July 2018 to one count of possession of a controlled substance and was sentenced to one to three years of probation.
As Wilson was being taken into custody last month, his arrest report states, officers found “a white powder substance” and an unregistered handgun in the center console of his car, as well as a “small baggy” containing what appeared to be heroin in his pants pocket.
Felons are prohibited from owning or possessing a firearm in Nevada.
Court records show that in addition to his 2018 conviction, Wilson has pleaded no contest in at least three other Clark County cases — on charges ranging from resisting a public officer to possession of drugs not for interstate commerce. His criminal history in the county dates to at least 2010, four years after he and Panic! at the Disco split, according to the records.
Wilson told MTV in summer 2006 that he “was kicked out of the band. It was 100 percent a surprise to me.”
At the time, drummer Spencer Smith said the decision was “based on Brent’s lack of responsibility and the fact that he wasn’t progressing musically with the band.”
Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writer David Ferrara contributed to this report.
