Two people have been charged in the alleged beating of a former West Point cadet at Bush Intercontinental Airport.
Efrem Holmes, 43, and Norma Harris, 63, are charged with assault.
Holmes is one of LaBelle’s bodyguards. Harris is her assistant and hairdresser.
Security cameras showed Houston native Richard King being beaten outside Terminal C in March.
King said three of LaBelle’s bodyguards attacked him.
King said he was waiting for his family to pick him up when he was attacked.
“As I was on my way out I was on the phone waiting to be picked up by my brother and that is all I remember,” he said. “I remember waking up the next morning with staples in my head. After that I had to figure out exactly what happened.”
The video shows two men begin to push King, eventually appearing to hit him and push him into a concrete pillar. King tries to get up and can’t, at least for a while, and even then he is bleeding badly.
“It was shocking… just could not believe that anything like that happened. Almost disturbing in a way,” he said.
King became the suspect, at least according to the original HPD report, the one filed by officers who appear to take pictures with Labelle before she leaves the scene.
King believes the officers were star-struck by LaBelle and that’s why they blamed him and reported the incident to West Point.
King was booted out of West Point because of the incident. The academy later said it would reconsider.
“I have sacrificed so much, and put so much into the last four years, it just seems like it is all down the drain,” he said.
King has filed a lawsuit in the case, which claims LaBelle actually ordered the bodyguards to attack him.
LaBelle and her management team have not commented on the case but she’s filed a countersuit against King.
