Shia LaBeouf pleads guilty to simple battery for punching bargoers during Mardi Gras

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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.

After LaBeouf was charged in February, a judge ordered him to return to drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

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.

While on location in Georgia filming “The Peanut Butter Falcon” later that year, he was arrested for public drunkenness and accused of disorderly conduct and obstruction and sentenced to probation.

In 2020, he was charged with misdemeanor battery and petty theft in Los Angeles.

That year, the English singer and actor FKA Twigs, whose legal name is Tahliah Barnett, also filed a lawsuit alleging LaBeouf was physically and emotionally abusive to her during their relationship, which they settled in July.

The actor first gained acclaim as a child for his role on the Disney Channel series “Even Stevens,” and worked steadily into adulthood. He is perhaps best known for his roles in 2007’s “Transformers” and in 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.”

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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.