HOUSTON (AP) The son of singer Patti LaBelle told a Texas jury on Friday that he was hit in the face by a man at a Houston airport terminal after the man shouted racial slurs at his mother.
Zuri Edwards testified in the misdemeanor assault trial of his mother's bodyguard, Efrem Holmes, 45, who hit Richard King at the Bush Intercontinental Airport in 2011.
According to KTRK-TV of Houston, Edwards testified that King was "intoxicated, loud, obnoxious" and was hurling racial epithets at his mother. Then, he said, "I am instantly struck on my face, on the right side of my face."
Holmes' attorneys have said their client was defending LaBelle and Edwards from King's onslaught.
King, 23, a West Point cadet, had a blood-alcohol level of .28 percent, almost 3 times Texas' legal threshold for intoxication, and has testified that he does not remember what happened the day of the airport incident.