Police withhold details of Eminem home break-in, cite safety concerns

Clinton Township — An edited police incident report and tape recording of a 911 emergency call from the home of rap superstar Eminem shed little light on what transpired during an April 5 break-in — apparently for the safety of the singer and others, police say.

Under the state Freedom of Information Act, The News obtained a two-page document and short tape recording from the Clinton Township Police Department concerning events leading up to the arrest of Matthew David Hughes, 27, who told officers he lived “down the street” from the home of Eminem — whose real name is Marshall Mathers.

Police said some details contained in the heavily redacted police document and tape had been removed under legal exceptions because both an unnamed “victim and witness” revealed information about the layout of the home and security measures that would make “persons and property more vulnerable to future trespass and actions.”

The explanatory letter, sent to The News by records clerk April Ventimigliara, was signed by Lt. Curt Randall of the police department’s support division.

Calls were not returned Tuesday by either Ventimigliara or Randall. Township police chief Fred Posavetz could not be reached for comment.

Mathers, who was at home in his gated community during the 4 a.m. break-in, was not injured in the incident and has made no comment on it or what his relationship — if any — is to Hughes, who was restrained by Mathers’ security guards and held until township police arrived.

According to a heavily redacted police report, police were dispatched to the address on a breaking and entering in progress. Hughes would not tell police his name and when asked what he was doing at the home, he “mumbled the word ‘friend.’” Hughes then told police he “lived down the street” but would not say where.

A 911 dispatcher received a call from an unidentified woman who reported a break-in there and said a person was being taken into custody by “security.”

“They are getting the guy,” the woman is heard to say to the dispatcher, before another part of the conversation is made inaudible.

Almost all of the 3-minute, 17-second recording is intentionally blurred by erasures.

Due to poor quality of the phone conversation, it was unclear if the woman was inside the home or at another location.

Hughes — who allegedly threw a stone or brick through one the home’s windows to gain entrance — was taken into custody on suspicion of home invasion and placed into a patrol car. He was taken to the township police station for booking, prints and a DNA swab, according to the report, and lodged without bond.

Hughes has subsequently been charged with first-degree home invasion, a felony punishable up to 20 years in prison, and malicious destruction of property between $1,000 and $20,000, a felony that carries up to five years in prison.

Hughes is in the Macomb County Jail in lieu of $50,000 bond pending a June 29 competency hearing.

mmartindale@detroitnews.com

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