Shia LaBeouf pleads guilty to battery charges over New Orleans bar incident

Actor sentenced to probation for incident in which he attacked three men and yelled homophobic slurs, according to witnesses

Shia LaBeouf on Wednesday pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery charges filed against the actor after his arrest over allegations that he struck three men at a New Orleans bar in February.

After his plea in the city’s criminal district courthouse, the Transformers film franchise star received a sentence of two years’ probation, rehabilitation for alcohol abuse, sensitivity training and anger management classes. He would be required to spend six months in New Orleans’s jail if he failed to complete his probation successfully, according to the local district attorney’s office.

LaBeouf’s attorney for the case, Sarah Chervinsky, said her client was now “looking forward to focusing on family, work and new creative projects”. She said the authorities’ investigation into the matter established that the actor’s arrest stemmed from “nothing more than a minor … bar tussle” on the morning of the Mardi Gras holiday in New Orleans.

Chervinsky denied her client’s actions that day were driven out of “bias”, despite claims supported by video that LaBeouf aimed anti-gay slurs at the victims.

Police arrested LaBeouf, 39, after he punched two men and head-butted a third at the R Bar in the New Orleans’s Marigny neighborhood at about 12.45am on 17 February.

Bar staff had told him to leave the premises after he became increasingly aggressive and insulted the men he battered with homophobic slurs, police said in sworn statements filed in court. LaBeouf was briefly jailed after being discharged from a hospital where he was taken at the time of his arrest. But he was soon released, required to put up a $105,000 bond and ordered by a judge to enroll in substance abuse treatment.

The Guardian has previously reported that one of the alleged victims, Nathan Thomas Reed, identifies as queer and another dresses in drag. The latter of those men, named Jeffrey Damnit, recorded a cellphone video of LaBeouf directing the homophobic insult “faggot” at him outside the bar.