Tommy Lee allegedly plans to fully pursue assault charges against his son Brandon after Monday’s night’s bloody brawl between the two.
Sources told TMZ that the Mötley Crüe drummer has asked police to keep investigating the battery case against Brandon, who is his oldest son with ex-wife Pamela Anderson.
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The reported reasoning behind Lee’s “tough love” is that he does not want Brandon, 21, to think behavior like that can happen again unpunished.
“You encourage what you tolerate, and he’s not going to tolerate what Brandon did and that’s why he wants the criminal case to keep moving along … at least for now,” the source said.
The entire issues began when the musician criticized Anderson on social media after she apparently brought up past abuse allegations she made against lee during an interview. The drummer pled no contest to assaulting Anderson in 1998 and served a six-month jail sentence at the time.
“Think she’d find something new to discuss instead of rehashing old s—, but I guess she has nothing else going on [and] needs attention. Signed, ‘The abuser’ (who she texts every day [and] asks for me back),” Lee tweeted.
Brandon was allegedly infuriated by the tweet and punched his father in the face over it. Lee was knocked unconscious, and authorities were called.
“He came in the room angry and my response to Pamela’s (Anderson) relentless press about our old relationship, with his dukes up, telling me to get up and fight him,” Lee alleged. “When I stood up he pushed me into a wall. I didn’t want to hit my son. I never have and I never will. If I wanted to clock him I would have knocked him on his ass. He had no problem knocking me out. I asked him to leave and he spun around and suckered punched me. Knocked me unconscious.”
The musician later shared a photo of his swollen lip and publicly revealed that Brandon had caused it.
“My heart is broken,” he wrote. “You can give your kids everything they could ever want in their entire lives and they can still turn against you. Good job Brandon! Great son!”
Lee has since said he regrets making the assault public, but he wanted an apology from Brandon. However, now he wants to handle things on the legal front.
“Truthfully this whole situation has become so depressing and out of control. My heart was broken when my son punched me,” Lee wrote. “Should I have posted it on social media? Probably not. But I couldn’t believe that he was not apologizing or responding to my messages, and didn’t care that he knocked me unconscious and filmed my unconscious body laughing. This isn’t what I want for anyone.”
Anderson has weighed in on the situation in support of Brandon. She believes Lee deserved the punch for his history of “abusive behavior” caused by alcoholism.
“He still cannot handle the guilt about his abusive behavior and has never taken responsibility for what he has done,” Anderson told TMZ. “He [Brandon] punched him in the nose for all of us who he has hurt. Now Lee feels humiliated – and is attempting to destroy his own son. This is the Devil — This is the disease of alcoholism.”
