Music business legend Clarence Avant’s wife Jacqueline Avant shot dead in home invasion

Jacqueline Avant, the wife of legendary music industry boss Clarence Avant, has been shot dead during a robbery attempt in the couple’s home in Los Angeles.

Local police said they were called to a shooting at 2.23am on Wednesday morning in Beverley Hills, and that one victim had been taken to hospital but did not survive.

A spokeswoman for Netflix, whose co-chief-executive is Mrs Avant’s son in law, confirmed to The Independent that she was the victim.

Mrs Avant, 81, often known as “Jackie”, was a former model and a steadfast philanthropist in the city, leading a support group for a childcare centre in the historically deprived South Central area and serving on the board of the international student faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Mr Avant, 90, dubbed “the godfather of black music”, is a longtime artist manager and record producer famous for his role in fostering numerous black musicians. He and Mrs Avant had been married since 1967.

The couple’s daughter Nicole, 53, is married to Netflix co-chief-executive Ted Sarandos and helped produce a Netflix documentary about her father called The Black Godfather.

It comes after a string of high-profile robberies against celebrities in LA, including an attack on the TV host Terrence Jenkins who was blocked in

The Beverly Hills Police Department said: “At 2:23 AM, [we] received a phone call regarding a shooting that had just occurred...

“Police units arrived and discovered a victim with a gunshot wound. The suspect(s) were no longer on the scene.

“Beverly Hills Fire Department paramedics transported the victim to a local hospital. Unfortunately, the victim did not survive.

“The City of Beverly Hills and the Beverly Hills Police Department extends our deepest sympathies to the victim’s families.”

The couple’s home is in the Trousdale Estates, an affluent area in the foothills overlooking Hollywood.

TMZ, which first broke the news of the shooting, reported that multiple people had broken into the Avants’ home and fired shots that hit Mrs Avant.

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