Radio talk-show host kicked in the head in Seattle

SEATTLE – A man angry about on-air comments made by radio talk show host Tom Leykis spotted him outside a Seattle nightspot and kicked him in the head, police say.

Leykis, based in Los Angeles, was treated at Swedish Medical Center and required 17 stitches for a cut above his eye. He also sustained a scraped knee and a black eye in the attack early Monday, a police report said.

No arrests had been reported by early Thursday.

“We are taking it very seriously,” Officer Scott Moss said.

Leykis, 48, is known for blunt talk. He named the woman accusing Kobe Bryant of rape, as well as a woman who tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge in Seattle and the 13-year-old boy raped by teacher Mary Kay Letourneau.

Leykis said he had never before been attacked by someone upset by his show.

Leykis, on one of his regular trips to broadcast from Seattle, said he was getting some fresh air about 3:45 a.m. outside the Five Point Cafe when a man came out of the nightspot, took a photograph, then went back inside and showed the digital image to two others.

“I was minding my own business. It was a person who knew who I was from the radio,” Leykis said.

A woman who had been with Leykis then came out of the Belltown-area restaurant and all three men followed. One said the radio host once took a call from him and then insulted him on the air, calling him a name and questioning his virility. “You had no right to do that,” the man said.

One of the other men, the one who had taken the picture, then kicked Leykis in the head, knocking him to the ground, according to the police report.