NEWSShia Blames Arrest on Cigarettes
May 13 2008, Published 1:00 p.m. ET
Shia LaBeouf appeared on Monday's Late Show with David Letterman where he shed some light on his recent arrest at a Chicago Walgreens store.
The 21-year old actor, who stars in the new Indiana Jones movie Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, said he got "pretty wasted" before being hauled off to "the drunk tank" for refusing to leave the Walgreens store. The actor told Letterman he was jones-ing for a cigarette and was pre-occupied with a pimple on his face.
"So I go to Walgreens and I go to the cosmetic aisle," LaBeouf recalled, "and I see the security guard and he's looking at me, four in the morning, pretty disheveled, pretty messed up in the magical sauce. And I get pimple cream and he's looking at me, he's kinda giggling to himself, and now I'm starting to feel like, 'What? It's really not that funny, guy, you know?'"
Shia says he got back to his hotel and realized he'd forgotten to buy the cigarettes. He returned to Walgreen's, this time wearing different clothes, but somehow forgot again to pick up a pack of smokes. On his third return trip, things with the security guard got confrontational.
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"I go back down and he goes, 'Really? Really? Really?' And I'm like, 'Yeah, really!' He goes, 'Well what are you doing here?' And I'm like, 'Well buddy, it's your worst nightmare.'"
LaBeouf said at that point the guard put him in plastic handcuffs and wrestled him to the ground. The actor says he acted like a "moron" during the incident. He was charged with misdemeanor criminal trespassing; the next day his mugshot was splashed across the Internet.
Prosecutors later dropped the charges because Walgreen Co. and a security company said they didn't want to continue the case.
''Drinking and driving is one thing, but drinking and shopping ... it's just as bad,'' LaBeouf said.
This isn't the actor's first brush with the law where cigarettes were involved--he was separately cited in February for smoking where he shouldn't in Burbank, Calif., but a judge later dismissed the charge.
