Shia LaBeouf pleads guilty to simple battery for punching bargoers during Mardi Gras
NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Actor Shia LaBeouf pleaded guilty Wednesday to three counts of simple battery for punching people outside a New Orleans bar in February during Mardi Gras.
Sentencing details were not immediately available in online court records. An attorney and a manager for LaBeouf did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Video of the Feb. 17 encounter shows a shirtless LaBeouf shoving one person to the ground and hitting another person in the face, “causing his nose to possibly dislocate,” according to a New Orleans police report.
Jeffrey Damnit, a well-known local entertainer who police identified as Jeffrey Klein in the incident report, said he was one of the people attacked by LaBeouf.
“He hit me, he connected a few times with punches, he pushed me a few times,” Damnit told The Associated Press earlier this year.
LaBeouf “just got nuts” trying to start fights and telling the entertainer and others that he would beat them up, Damnit said. He added that LaBeouf had pushed him from behind at the bar earlier in the night, shouting homophobic slurs and threatening his life.
Damnit and others subdued LaBeouf and tried to get him to leave the area, but he would not leave and became more aggressive, according to Damnit and the police report.
LaBeouf has had several run-ins with the law during his career, including a 2017 New York City arrest on suspicion of assault that happened during a livestream.
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