A 26-year-old New York man named Mario Licato had to attend to a nasty looking black eye just because he looked like the actor Shia LaBeouf.
Licato was exiting a subway station Saturday night around 8 p.m. on the Lower East Side in Manhattan when he was unexpectedly assaulted. He was on his way to a friend's show when a man popped up out of nowhere and punched him right in the left eye.
"I was walking up the stairs," Licato said of the incident. "I had my head down - there were people in front of me - just to make sure I wasn't going to fall. I didn't even see the guy. I just see his fist coming towards me. It knocked me, and while I was falling down the stairs, all I hear was, 'This is because you look exactly like Shia LaBeouf!'"
A photo posted by Mario Licato (@mariolicato) on Apr 24, 2016 at 7:28pm PDT
The man broke Licato's glasses and knocked him out cold. When he regained consciousness, a couple helped him out and asked if he even knew who the guy was. The couple said that the man who punched Licato was about 6-foot to 6-foot-3, while other witnesses said that the man ran down the subway platform to get on a train.
"I was so confused. I was even more confused because I got up and I was like, am I crazy or did I hear him say, 'This is because you look like Shia LaBeouf?'" he explained. "And [the couple] were like, 'Nope. That's exactly what he said as he was running away from you.'"
New York City police said that they plan to look into the incident and at the surveillance footage from the subway station. Licato said that if police do catch the man who punched him, he would have some questions for the culprit.
"I would basically just say, 'So what did Shia LaBeouf ever do to you that you wanted to punch him in the face? Was it one of his performance pieces?'" Licato said. "Did this guy steal his girlfriend? Like, what did he do so bad that he wanted to punch somebody that looked like him?"
The 26-year-old New Yorker said that he has been told numerous times that he resembled LaBeouf.
"A bunch of times - 10 times I would say, at least," he said.
A photo posted by Mario Licato (@mariolicato) on Apr 27, 2016 at 6:12am PDT
