An unknown assailant ran up to a man in a New York City subway station, punched him in the face, and yelled that it was for the crime of looking "exactly like Shia LaBeouf." Yet he still might not be the biggest villain in this story.
Mario Licato (who says he has been "stopped on the street before, at least 10 times" by people confusing him for the Transformers star) told Gothamist that on Saturday, the mysterious perpetrator knocked him unconscious as he got off a train in the Lower East Side. The last words he heard were, "This is because you look exactly like Shia LaBeouf!" When Licato came to, blood was dripping from his face and his glasses were broken. Concerned witnesses told him he wasn't mistaken, and that the attacker (described as being in his mid-20s, around 6 feet tall, and built "like a frat boy") did say he did it because of Licato's striking resemblance to LaBeouf.
Licato says things somehow got worse for him once the EMTs showed up, and one told him, "Welcome to New York, buddy." His response? "'Well, f—k you, I'm born and raised here.' I was like, 'Are you kidding me? You're standing in front of somebody who's bleeding out of their face and that's your first response?'" The EMTs ruled out a concussion, then broke protocol by leaving before police arrived, Licato told Gothamist.
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He's still banged up — his left nostril is numb, his bruises are "changing color by the hour," and one of his eyes turned red — but more than anything, Licato wants to know what LaBeouf did to this man that made him so angry he walloped a doppelgänger stranger. "He must have did something so mean," he said. "Did he steal his girlfriend? Did he just see his last performance art piece?"
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