Cage the Elephant frontman Matt Shultz arrested in New York

By Mike Bedigan, PA Los Angeles Correspondent

Cage The Elephant frontman Matt Shultz has been arrested in New York on charges of possessing loaded firearms.

The singer, 39, was taken into custody after police discovered the weapons at a room in the Bowery Hotel, in lower Manhattan.

Officers from the New York Police Department (NYPD) responded to a 911 call at around 10am on Thursday following reports of a person in possession of a weapon.

“Police responded to the location and subsequent to an investigation, a search warrant was obtained and two loaded firearms were recovered from a room at the location,” an NYPD spokesperson said, in a statement to the PA news agency.

Shultz was arrested and charged with two counts of criminal possession of a weapon.

Photos and video circulated online showed the singer being escorted from the premises by NYPD officers, wearing a large puffer coat.

Shultz formed the US rock band Cage the Elephant with his brother in 2006 in Kentucky, before moving to London in 2008.

The band has won two Grammy awards for best rock album, first in 2017 for Tell Me I’m Pretty, and again in 2020 for Social Cues.