New York man attacked for the crime of looking like Shia LaBeouf
A New York City man was reportedly physically assaulted by a stranger on the street due to his passing resemblance to actor Shia LaBeouf, according to a report in Gothamist. Mario Licato says he was exiting the Delancey Street F train station on Manhattan’s Lower East Side at around 8 PM on Saturday when he was unexpectedly punched in his LaBeouf-esque face and knocked briefly unconscious. “I was walking up the stairs,” Licato explains to Gothamist. “I didn’t even see the guy. I just see his fist coming towards me. It knocked me, and while I was falling down the stairs, all I hear was, ‘This is because you look exactly like Shia LaBeouf!’” Just to put a fine point on this, the unknown assailant—whom witnesses describe as a muscular 6-foot-tall bro type in his mid-20s—did not think he was punching the the 29-year-old actor. He was, by his own parting words, punishing a person for looking similar to Transformers: Dark of the Moon star.