DIVA

Lawsuit: Patti LaBelle Ordered Beatdown

Of West Point cadet.

A former West Point cadet is suing singer Patti LaBelle for allegedly ordering her bodyguards to beat him up without provocation. Richard King, who was a cadet at the time, claims that LaBelle’s 400-pound bodyguard Efrem Holmes allegedly attacked him while he was waiting for his family to pick him up at the Houston airport in 2011. He would later drop out of West Point, he claims, because of a traumatic brain injury that occurred when he hit his head on a concrete pillar during the attack. However, LaBelle’s lawyers say that King attacked first and that he was yelling racial slurs at LaBelle, had been asked multiple times to step back, and was drunk.