Earlier this month Patti LaBelle was slapped with a civil suit after her bodyguards stomped out a drunken cadet at George Bush Intercontinental Airport [click here if you missed that]. Now Patti is counter suing, claiming the cadet threw the first punch...
From Chron
Soul singer Patti LaBelle is countersuing the former West Point cadet who claimed her bodyguards beat him, saying the Houston man started the fight by punching her son in the face.
LaBelle's lawsuit accuses Richard King, 23, who was suspended from the United States Military Academy as a result of the March 11 incident at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, of cursing the singer and using racially and sexually offensive language, and says he tried to force his way into her car.
LaBelle's legal petition, filed last week in Houston district federal court, is her first response to King's lawsuit, which he filed earlier this month and which seeks actual and punitive damages.
Much of the late-night altercation at Terminal C's passenger pickup area was captured on security video, but King was off-camera for brief periods and the videotape lacks audio.
The tape shows King talking on his cellphone as he wandered through the pickup area, eventually approaching LaBelle's limo. Then, two men and a woman, members of the singer's staff, pushed and punched King, ultimately slamming his head into a concrete pillar.
In her lawsuit, which seeks actual damages and litigation costs, LaBelle says an inebriated King launched the verbal and physical attack without provocation. When Zuri Edwards, 37, LaBelle's son and driver, told King he was addressing his mother, the lawsuit says, the military cadet hit him in the face.
The suit says LaBelle and her staff believed they were in immediate danger and responded with "the degree of force that was necessary."
King was taken to a local hospital with a concussion.
A spokeswoman for LaBelle's attorneys, the Houston office of Gardere Wynne Sewell, said no statement would be made about the case.
