Pianist's life lost during a walk home

"He said, 'Benji, I will see you tomorrow for sure,' " bartender Benjamin Avery recalled.

An hour later, Osnes, 55, lay dying in a crosswalk a few blocks away, the victim, police say, of a violent road rage attack by a Swedish hip-hop artist.

The rapper, David Moses Jassy, also known as Dave Monopoly, 34, made a brief appearance in Superior Court on Wednesday. His arraignment was postponed a week to allow him to hire an attorney.

According to authorities, Osnes, who did not own a car and was a stickler for pedestrian rights, was crossing a street near his residence when Jassy's rented SUV drifted into the crosswalk. After Osnes struck the front of the vehicle with his hands, Jassy allegedly got out, punched Osnes, kicked him in the head when he stooped to recover his glasses and then ran over him with the vehicle. Bystanders, including an off-duty Anaheim police officer, witnessed the assault and tried unsuccessfully to detain Jassy, according to authorities.

Osnes was pronounced dead at a hospital, and Jassy was arrested Monday after investigators traced the license of his rented vehicle.

He faces charges of assault, battery and leaving the scene of an accident, but the district attorney's office is mulling additional counts depending on autopsy results and further investigation.

Although he identifies himself as the "CEO of Jassy World Entertainment" on his MySpace page, Jassy is a minor music industry player whose biggest accomplishment to date is rapping on an album track for "High School Musical" actress Ashley Tisdale.

Avery, the bartender, came to court for the short hearing, in part, he said, to see what sort of man would hurt Osnes, who he described as rail-thin and "frail." Jail records show that Jassy outweighed Osnes -- who friends say weighed about 150 -- by 50 pounds.

"I guess I was expecting someone who was really gangster or homeless, but he doesn't appear that way," Avery said of Jassy, a trim man with light eyes and a shaved head.

Before the short hearing, Jassy huddled in a holding pen with a public defender, an interpreter and a representative from the Swedish Consulate. When he spotted a contingent of journalists from his homeland, some armed with video and still cameras, he pulled his blue jail-issue shirt over his head and kept it there as Commissioner Henry Hall asked if he agreed to the postponement.