Shia LaBeouf Back in Trouble With the Law After Drunken Cigarette-Bumming Gone Wrong
Shia LaBeouf gets arrested a lot. There was the incident in 2005, where he got an assault with a deadly weapon charge after threatening his neighbor by driving directly into his car, the 2007 arrest outside a Chicago Walgreens, the 2008 drunk driving accident and subsequent license suspension, the 2011 bar fight, the 2014 disorderly conduct charge outside Studio 54, a public intoxication arrest in 2015, and then a minor harassment violation back in this most recent January during an anti-Trump demonstration. That’s quite the rap sheet, but it’s like the old judicial system proverb goes: “Seven strikes and you’re out.”
Deadline informs us that LaBeouf had yet another run-in with John Q. Law over the weekend while shooting his indie The Peanut Butter Falcon in the Savannah, Georgia area. The police report indicates that around 4AM, the star of Transformers and Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac approached a bystander and local law enforcement officer to ask for a cigarette. LaBeouf did not take the news that there were no spare cigarettes to be had all that sportingly:
When LaBeouf wasn’t given a cigarette, he became disorderly, using profanities and vulgar language in front of the women and children present. He was told to leave the area and refused, becoming aggressive toward the officer.
The officer then moved to arrest the noted actor, conceptual performance artist, and one-time Even Stevens headliner, who then made a break for it and ran into the lobby of a nearby hotel, where he was apprehended. He was, in case it needs to be said, drunk while this was happening.
The knee-jerk reaction is to shake your head in wonderment, but I detect a faintly tragic element not too far beneath the surface. He’s appears to have some serious problems, and the stresses of stardom from a young age have had adverse affects on countless young actors. So if he’s a victim of himself, then that’s just who LaBeouf needs to be saved from.