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Dec 11, 2017 Queens of the Stone Age By Christopher Roberts

At their performance at KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas show on Saturday night outside Los Angeles, Queens of the Stone Age‘s frontman kicked music photographer Chelsea Lauren in the face. She was in the photo pit shooting the show when Homme kicked her camera, which hit her face and sent her to the hospital. Lauren posted about the incident from the hospital and included a video clearly showing her being kicked. Homme issued an initial apology on Sunday, in which he said, “I did not mean for that to happen and I am very sorry.” Then late last night Homme issued another apology via two video messages where he said: “I don’t have any excuse or reason to justify what I did. I was a total dick.” Check out various social media posts from both Lauren and Homme on the matter below.

In one of Lauren’s Instagram posts she wrote: “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. I hold nobody accountable for this but Josh himself.”

Lauren was photographing for Shutterstock.com and had this to say to Variety about the incident: “Josh was coming over and I was pretty excited, I’ve never actually photographed Queens of the Stone Age before, I was really looking forward to it. I saw him coming over and I was shooting away. The next thing I know his foot connects with my camera and my camera connects with my face, really hard. He looked straight at me, swung his leg back pretty hard and full-blown kicked me in the face. He continued performing, I was startled, I kind of stopped looking at him, I just got down and was holding my face because it hurt so badly.”

She told Variety she plans to file a police report: “I feel like if I don’t do anything, he gets to kick people in the face and not get in trouble because he’s a musician. That’s not right.”

Thanks to joshhomme I now get to spend my night in the ER. Seriously, WHO DOES THAT?!?... https://t.co/VXGM4uRbaj

— Chelsea Lauren (@ChelseaLaurenLA) December 10, 2017

A post shared by Chelsea Lauren (@chelsealaurenla) on Dec 9, 2017 at 11:38pm PST

Thank you to the #QOTSA fanbase for being a solid group of people overall and standing up for what’s right regardless of your fandom. It is not falling on deaf ears and I really appreciate every message. ❤️ Seriously, thank you.

— Chelsea Lauren (@ChelseaLaurenLA) December 10, 2017

A post shared by Chelsea Lauren (@chelsealaurenla) on Dec 10, 2017 at 11:22am PST

pic.twitter.com/JCtdOAFEbq

— QOTSA (@qotsa) December 10, 2017

A post shared by QOTSA (@queensofthestoneage) on Dec 10, 2017 at 9:59pm PST

A post shared by QOTSA (@queensofthestoneage) on Dec 10, 2017 at 10:14pm PST

Queens of the Stone Age released a new album, the Mark Ronson-produced Villains, back in August via Matador.

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