New Orleans prosecutors file formal battery charges against Shia LaBeouf

Key points

• New Orleans state prosecutors on Thursday filed formal misdemeanor battery charges against Shia LaBeouf, four months after police officers there arrested him on allegations that he struck three men at a bar.
• That move from the office of local district attorney Jason Williams means prosecutors opted to not pursue hate-crime charges against LaBeouf, the star of the Transformers film franchise, despite claims evidently supported by video that LaBeouf aimed anti-gay slurs at the alleged victims.
• Police arrested LaBeouf after he purportedly punched two men and headbutted a third at the R Bar in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans at about 12.45am on 17 February – which was the city’s Mardi Gras holiday.
• Bar staff had asked him to leave after becoming increasingly aggressive and insulting the men he battered with homophobic slurs, police said in sworn statements filed in court.
• LaBeouf was briefly jailed after being discharged from a...