LOS ANGELES—Clark Gable, a grandson of the late movie legend, was arrested in Hollywood on Friday for allegedly pointing a laser device at a police helicopter.
The 22-year-old was detained with a friend after a patrolling police pilot reported a “bright green laser light” had illuminated his cockpit over Sunset Boulevard.
“Suddenly the cockpit was illuminated with green light, a laser light, the pilot took evasive action,” Gus Villanueva of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)’s Hollywood station told the local KCAL9 television station.
Officers on the ground traced the source of the light to a car, inside which were Clark James Gable and a friend, Maximilian Anderson, 23. They were booked for a felony and held on $250,000 bail.
Gable was released later in the day, and is due to appear in court on August 26. “It was a misunderstanding, you know, people make mistakes and you learn from them,” Gable told KCAL9.
He said the laser “was just a gift that I got and people make mistakes and that’s the bottom line.
“I’m going to learn from it and hopefully others will.”
His grandfather was most famous as Rhett Butler in 1939’s “Gone with the Wind,” which earned him an Oscar nomination, five years after he won an Academy Award for his role in “It Happened One Night.”