Limp Bizkit frontman FRED DURST has been cleared of fifth degree assault (simple assault) by a court in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Durst was charged with allegedly kicking a security guard, Pat Estes, in the head during the band’s show in the town last July.
Legal teams for both men reached an agreement last week, and while the level of compensation has not been resolved, it is thought that Estes has upped his previous claim of $US30,000 for medical bills and lost wages.
The incident stemmed from an onstage tussle between Durst‘s personal security guard and Estes, one of the local crew.
Durst explained to MTV News shortly after his arrest for the incident: “I saw a kid get thrown over the barricade into the area where the security guards are, and they started beating him up. My security guard told them to let go of the kid, and they started fighting my security guard. Two of them held him, and one of them started to try to fight him, and then my security guard went down.
“I screamed out on the mic for them to stop. They weren’t stopping, so the guy that was on top, I kicked him in the head and told him to stop. He kept going, and I kicked him in the head again, and then he stopped, and then I stopped the whole concert and made a scene out of it so they would stop, and that was it. ”
Durst admitted, “I shouldn’t have kicked him, but he shouldn’t have done that. I saw a friend down… and I reacted.”
Neither Fred Durst or any of his legal team have yet made any official statement.
Limp Bizkit are currently in the studio working on their third album, provisionally titled ‘Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavoured Water’.
They set out on a ten-city tour of the US on July 4 with Cypress Hill. The free shows have stoked controversy as they are being sponsored by under-fire website and software producer Napster.