This happened halfway through 2011 and I remember wanted to express my anger at it, now I have a chance to. For the record, the homeless man could have said something terrible or said he had a gun but there is never a reason to have to get out of your car and beat the hell out of anyone with a tire iron. Dude, drive the hell on your merry way to your billion dollar mansion, take a xanax, drink some 24-year-old scotch and relax. For a quick recap from the LA Times:
Lee has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon in connection with a June 2011 assault on a transient on a 101 Freeway off-ramp.
Lee was stopped at a light when he was approached by a man seeking money, Los Angeles police said. Words were exchanged, and Lee and another man in the car chased the homeless man and assaulted him with a tire iron.
The source said detectives believe Lee was angered when the transient revealed the tattoo and that prompted him to get out of his car, chase him down and beat the man.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department, Lee was driving a rented Range Rover on the 101 Freeway in June 2011, with an acquaintance in the passenger seat. When he got off the freeway at Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood, he spotted a transient who had been asking passing drivers for money.
The man was changing into a sweatshirt, revealing a sexually explicit tattoo, and Lee seemed to have viewed the tattoo as a suggestion of disrespect, a police official said. Lee rolled down his window and apparently got into an argument with the man, then parked on Vermont and left his car to confront the man.
Lee demanded that the man kneel and apologize, and the man consented, officials said. But Lee attacked him anyway, chasing him down, kicking him and “beating him down” with a tire iron, LAPD officials said.
