Police: Harrelson fight in self-defense
Woody Harrelson found himself in the middle of his fourth assault investigation in his long career after he reportedly decked a man who was aggressively photographing him and his daughter at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., Wednesday night.
According to police, Harrelson acted in selfdefense when the man, who appeared to be intoxicated, lunged at him, according to Page Six and NBC News. That means the man, not the “Natural Born Killers” actor, is likely to face charges in the altercation.
Harrelson, 60, has previously been accused of attacking photographers who get too close to him and his family. In 1995, the Academy Award nominee was ordered to pay photographers over an incident on Martha’s Vineyard, although he said the photographers had been stalking his family, NBC News said.
Fifteen years later, Harrelson settled a lawsuit filed by a photographer following an incident in Hollywood in 2006, New York’s Daily News reported. The photographer alleged that the Emmy winner broke his video camera, choked him and ordered his bodyguard to attack him. Harrelson countersued for invasion of privacy, but the case was dismissed before it went to trial, records show.
Meanwhile, Harrelson was with his 12-year-old daughter when he was caught up in another incident at New York’s La Guardia Airport in 2009, around the time of the release of his movie “Zombieland,” another Daily News report said. A TMZ photographer said that the actor chased him through the airport and broke one of his cameras.
Harrelson issued a tongue-in-cheek statement in response to the photographer’s claims, the Daily News said. “With my daughter at the airport, I was startled by a paparazzo who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie,” he said.
In Wednesday night’s incident, Metropolitan Police officers were summoned to the luxury D.C. hotel just after 11 p.m. over a report of a fight on the roof deck, according to a police report obtained by NBC News and Page Six.