A 23-year-old man sporting a replica handgun with a knife blade ran upstage and tackled Dave Chappelle during the comedian’s performance at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night, stunning fans and raising new questions on site security.

Isaiah Lee was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and is being held on $30,000 bond, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Authorities are investigating how Lee entered the venue and was able to evade security checks to approach the scene, according to law enforcement sources.

Video of the incident shows the man rushing from the left side of the stage as Chappelle is about to end his performance. He appears to lower his head as he charges at the comedian, knocking him backwards. He retreated to the stage as security assaulted him.

Video showed paramedics placing the restrained man, who appeared to have an arm injury, on a stretcher behind the scene. Fans booed as paramedics whisked him away in an ambulance.

Chappelle, who was performing his stand-up routine at the amphitheater as part of Netflix’s Is a Joke: The Festival, was uninjured and continued with the show. But the incident shocked fans and prompted a huge reaction from the police.

It also heightened existing concerns about the safety of comedians following Will Smith’s infamous slap in the face of Chris Rock at the Oscars after Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Chappelle had addressed the situation during his performance earlier in the night.

Chappelle could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday.

The motive for the attack was unknown. Officials don’t know how Lee obtained the gun from Hollywood Bowl security. The venue, which is jointly owned and operated by the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn., uses metal detectors to screen visitors.

Representatives for the Hollywood Bowl could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday.

After the man rushed to the stage, several people came to Chappelle’s aid, including actor Jamie Foxx, who was also on the show.

Rock, who had performed earlier in the evening, joined Chappelle on stage and joked, “Was that Will Smith?”

Chappelle had just finished a routine in which he talked about how the comics had to care more about their personal safety when the man later identified as Lee rushed onto the stage.

“The comedian literally just said he now has more security because of all the uproar of his jokes about the trans community,” tweeted BuzzFeed News reporter Brianna Sacks, who attended the show. She tweeted that “while the attacker was being beaten up”, Chappelle “made a joke about how he was probably a trans man”.

Prior to the incident – about halfway through his set – Chappelle called his security guard, who he introduced as Travis, to come up on stage to bring the comedian a drink in a mug Solo red.

“It’s my new security,” Chappelle told the crowd, adding that he had to beef up his security details now that people had “taken it out for him.”

He then launched into the story of a man covered in racist tattoos who kept coming to his home in Ohio and yelling the N-word at him. protection from the man, which the court said was the only way the officers could arrest the man.

“Or you can just shoot him,” Chappelle recalled, telling him the court administrator through a ventriloquist smile.

“I didn’t like it,” he said. Instead, he offered to facilitate a more rehabilitative approach to his intruder with the stipulation that it would never be revealed that he was the one footing the bill.

The comedian’s set ended with two standing ovations, and the crowd seemed receptive to him all night long, which made the unprecedented attack all the more shocking, according to attendees.

Several of the opening acts alluded to their comfort in voicing controversial jokes in the presence of a “Dave Chappelle audience” and each time the crowd clapped appreciatively in response.

Since October, the Emmy-winning comic has been at the center of a public relations storm over jokes deemed to be transphobic. The controversy culminated when several Netflix employees walked off the job and Chappelle’s fans also showed up at the protest to defend him.

The fallout has forced Netflix into a corner, split the comedy community and led many to reassess Chappelle’s brand, “cancel culture” and free speech. Netflix refused to pull its hit special or label its jokes as hate speech, which were among demands made by some of the streaming giant’s employees.

Times writer Nathan Solis contributed to this report