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Charges Dropped in New Orleans Against Cuba Gooding Jr.

After a confrontation in a New Orleans bar led to police issuing an arrest warrant for Oscar winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr., the female bartender who alleged that Gooding shoved her has now dropped the charges.

The initial reports indicated that Gooding got aggravated when tourists were taking pictures of him while he was at The Olde Absinthe House on Bourbon Street. When the bartender approached the actor to get him to calm down, he took an open palm and shoved her. One of her co-workers called the police and after being alerted about the police coming, Gooding allegedly shoved the bartender again and left the scene, according to a statement by the police.

But after the Jerry Maguire star voluntarily went into the police station and spoke to the police, the authorities quashed the arrest warrant that had been issued yesterday. Gooding’s rep said that the actor and police were “moving swiftly to resolve this misunderstanding.

A rep for the Old Absinthe House told reporters that they had been led to believe their employee “has chosen to drop all charges.” But the rep said the Old Absinthe House  still planned to investigate what happened “internally.”

There was a hearing scheduled for Friday in the case, but it’s because the charges were formally dropped Gooding is unlikely to have to appear.

Gooding was in New Orleans filming scenes for The Butler, a film with a star-studded cast, including Oprah Winfrey, Lenny Kravitz and Jane Fonda.

This is the second time Gooding has had a run-in with the law for putting his hands on a woman in less than six months. In March, he was accused of groping several women and punching a guy trying to take his picture while in a bar in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When TMZ asked about that incident, he responded by saying the allegations are “bulls—t.”

Gooding has struggled in his career of late, not equaling the highs he experienced in the 1990’s with films like Boyz N the Hood, A Few Good Men and Jerry Maguire. He had a role in Red Tails earlier this year, his first appearance in a major Hollywood production since Denzel Washington’s American Gangster in 2007.

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