Shia LaBeouf faces misdemeanor charges in L.A. over alleged hat theft
Actor Shia LaBeouf has been charged with battery and theft after a June altercation in Los Angeles.
The “Honey Boy” star was charged last week with one count of misdemeanor battery and one count of misdemeanor theft, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office confirmed Thursday.
Prosecutors pressed charges against the 34-year-old actor for allegedly using force and violence against a man named Tyler Murphy, according to a copy of the misdemeanor complaint obtained by The Times on Thursday. The altercation, which took place on June 12, allegedly resulted in LaBeouf taking a hat that belonged to Murphy.
The complaint asks that a warrant be issued for LaBeouf’s arrest.
Representatives for the “Transformers” actor did not immediately respond to The Times’ requests for comment Thursday.
There are dramatic storm clouds moving over the Texas state Capitol on a quiet Sunday morning in Austin.
According to TMZ, LaBeouf and Murphy were involved in a verbal altercation that turned physical. After that, the actor allegedly took off Murphy’s cap and left with it.
It’s not the first time the former Disney Channel star has had brushes with the law. In 2014, LaBeouf was arrested outside New York City’s Studio 54 after he drunkenly disrupted a performance of “Cabaret.” He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was sentenced to months of alcohol-abuse treatment.
In 2017, LaBeouf was arrested again after scuffling with a man at his “He Will Not Divide Us” protest in New York. (Those charges were later dropped.) That same year, he was booked for public drunkenness, disorderly conduct and obstruction in Savannah, Ga., that ultimately led to his infamous racist rant at the police station.
In 2018, he told Esquire that what happened in Georgia “was mortifying”: “White privilege and desperation and disaster...It came from a place of self-centered delusion...It was me trying to absolve myself of guilt for getting arrested.”
This past summer, the method actor was embroiled in a different kind of offense: whether he used brownface in the film “The Tax Collector.”
Director David Ayer says Shia LaBeouf plays a white guy who adopts Mexican American L.A. ‘cholo’ culture in “The Tax Collector.” It’s sort of how he grew up too.
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