A man was arrested at Chris Rock's first show since Will Smith assaulted him on the night of the Oscars for causing a disruption and being physically aggressive towards an intervening police officer.
The incident took place Wednesday night at Wilbur Theater, which was the first stop of Rock's Ego Death World Tour 2022.
According to the Boston Police Department, an officer monitoring the crowd noticed a "loud disturbance inside the theater" and upon further investigation found staff members from the venue trying to remove two members of the audience who were refusing to comply with the Wilbur Theater's masking requirements, according to Newsweek.
While one of the fans eventually agreed to comply, the other man, 25-year-old Kaleb Anthony Herd, "became increasingly agitated, yelling loudly, disrupting the show, and physically assaultive towards the officer and theater staff," the outlet noted, citing Boston Police Department.
According to the report, Herd pushed the officer as well as a member of the Wilbur Theater staff then struck the officer in the leg. Once outside the venue, Herd continued to assault the officer, who deployed pepper spray, Newsweek reports.
Herd was placed into custody without further incident and is now to be charged with trespassing, disorderly conduct, assault and battery on a police officer while resisting arrest, and assault and battery.
Multiple reports confirm that the incident is not a result of the Oscars night attack and was strictly related to masking requirements.
"That was the disruption at the show. He was not heckling Chris Rock," Boston Police Officer Andre Watson told MassLive. "From the information I have, he was not heckling Chris Rock while he was on stage. He was having a disagreement with the theater staff about their masking policy."
The disruption took place just after Rock addressed Sunday night's assault with the crowd. Smith walked onto the stage of the Academy Awards and hit Rock in the face with an open palm after he made a joke about the actor’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith's balding head. Speaking about the ordeal on Wednesday night, Rock said that he had written his whole show before Smith hit him and did not have much to say about it.
"I don't have a bunch of s*** about what happened, so if you came to hear that, I had like a whole show I wrote before this weekend," he said, according to CNN. "And I'm still kind of processing what happened, so at some point I'll talk about that s***. And it'll be serious and it'll be funny, but right now I'm going to tell some jokes."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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