Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme has been caught on video kicking a female photographer in the head during a concert.
Photographer Chelsea Lauren posted a video to Instagram of the singer kicking her in the head during a Queens of the Stone Age gig in Los Angeles on Saturday, Dec. 9.
“Thanks to @joshhomme I now get to spend my night in the ER. Seriously, WHO DOES THAT?!?” she wrote alongside the video.
Homme subsequently apologized to Lauren in a video posted to social media two days later.
“I don’t have any excuse or reason to justify what I did … I’m truly sorry and I hope you’re okay,” he said.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life and last night was definitely one of them, and I apologize for that to you. I want to be a good man but I think last night I definitely failed at that.”
He concluded by saying he understood Lauren would “have to do whatever you have to do”, presumably in response to a Variety interview with the photographer in which she said she intended to file a police report.
On Sunday Lauren posted two images to Instagram of the moments before Homme kicked her that appear to show him smiling.
“I was in the pit in tears—and he just stared at me smiling,” Lauren wrote.
She continued: “Assault in any form is not okay, no matter what the reasoning. Alcohol and drugs are no excuse. I was where I was allowed to be, I was not breaking any rules. I was simply trying to do my job.”
She said she had been released from hospital early in the morning with a sore neck and bruised eyebrow.
Another image taken later in the gig shows Homme with blood running down his face after he reportedly cut himself with a knife.
“The irony is someone had thrown an ice cube on to the very slick catwalk before the QOTSA set”, she wrote. “I was afraid that one of the band members might slip and hurt themselves so, when the lights went dark, I used my arm to wipe down the runway so nobody would hurt themselves.”
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