LOS ANGELES (AP) — Justin Bieber will be charged in Los Angeles in an egg-throwing incident in January that damaged a neighbor’s home, prosecutors said.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said Bieber will be charged Wednesday with one count of misdemeanor vandalism.
The Grammy-nominated singer will not be present for the 1:30 p.m. arraignment at Superior Court in Van Nuys, DA spokeswoman Jane Robison said.
It’s not immediately clear what the potential penalty is.
Prosecutors spent months considering whether to file charges. The singer’s Calabasas mansion was searched on Jan. 14 and detectives later filed a search warrant to obtain images from Bieber’s Instagram account to match them up to surveillance footage taken from his home. A detective wrote that a person matching Bieber’s description was seen high-fiving his friends after running toward a neighbor’s home, but footage of the egg attack was not captured.
A call Wednesday seeking comment from Bieber’s attorney, Howard Weitzman, was not immediately returned.
Sheriff’s detectives estimated the damage to the home at up to $20,000. The threshold for filing a felony is if more than $400 in damage was caused.
Bieber was not arrested during the search of his home, but his friend and personal manager Xavier Domonique Smith was charged with felony drug possession. Smith, an aspiring rapper who goes by the name Lil Za, pleaded no contest to felony possession of ecstasy and was sentenced to probation and a drug treatment program.
Bieber faces two other cases in Florida and Toronto. A Miami court has set a trial date this month for his DUI case, which also includes charges that he resisted arrest without violence and was driving with an expired license.
A preliminary toxicology report showed that the singer tested positive for marijuana and the anti-anxiety drug Xanax after his arrest, but no other illicit drugs were found in his system.
The singer turned himself in to Toronto authorities on Jan. 29 on a charge that he assaulted a limo driver in late December. Weitzman has said that Bieber is innocent in that case, which he described as being the equivalent of a misdemeanor case in the United States.
Bieber gained stardom with his debut album at age 15 and his career has been guided by a pair of music industry heavyweights, singer Usher and manager Scooter Braun. He has been nominated for two Grammy Awards for his 2010 full-length album debut “My World 2.0,” but his popularity has waned.
