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Letter to the editor

Crowe arrested in phone incident

By Times Staff
Published June 7, 2005

Actor Russell Crowe was arrested Monday and accused of throwing a telephone at an employee of the Manhattan hotel where he was staying. Crowe, 41, who plays a boxer in his latest film, Cinderella Man, allegedly threw the phone at the concierge at the Mercer Hotel in SoHo, "hitting him in the face and causing a laceration and substantial pain," according to the complaint.

Crowe was arraigned on charges of second-degree assault and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon - the telephone - before a Manhattan judge, who released Crowe on his own recognizance and told him to return to court Sept. 14.

"This arose because he was trying to get his wife on the phone in Australia," Crowe's lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt, said outside the police precinct where Crowe was booked. "He was in his room. He couldn't get a line, and there was a disagreement."

Crowe's publicist, Robin Baum, told TV's Extra that Crowe brought the faulty phone to a clerk downstairs and threw it against the wall.

[Last modified June 7, 2005, 11:09:05]