LOS ANGELES (CNN) — The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department carried out a search Tuesday at Justin Bieber’s California mansion in a vandalism probe.
The felony search warrant served on Bieber’s home stems from allegations of an egg attack on a neighbor’s house last week, a sheriff’s department spokesman said.
“The purpose of the search warrant is to seek video surveillance or other possible evidence in the vandalism that occurred on January 9, 2014,” a sheriff’s department statement said Tuesday..
Investigators called a news conference Tuesday to discuss the search.
Ahead of the news conference, they revealed the vandalism damage to the house of Bieber’s neighbor was about $20,000. The cost of repairing the damage to the house is a key factor in determining the severity of the charge. Any damage more than $950 would qualify the charge as a felony.
Bieber hasn’t spoken to investigators about last week’s incident, and his representative declined to comment to CNN.
“A neighbor accused him of throwing eggs at the house, and we are investigating,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Don Prince told CNN on Monday
If investigators find enough evidence that Bieber, 19, threw the eggs that splattered against his next-door neighbor’s home, they could refer the matter to the district attorney’s office for possible prosecution, Prince said.
Bieber lives in the Oaks, an exclusive gated community. He moved into a $6.5 million mansion there two years ago. An impressive list of the rich and famous — including Michael Jackson’s mother and children — live in the neighborhood, about 30 miles west of downtown Los Angeles.
His neighbors have complained about Bieber several times in the past year, including in May when two neighbors called the sheriff to report he was speeding down residential streets, a sheriff’s spokesman said.
Deputies visited Bieber’s home in response, but the singer refused to talk to them, sheriff’s department spokesman Steve Whitmore said.
Retired NFL star Keyshawn Johnson went to Bieber’s home then to counsel him about the dangers of going too fast on the residential streets, but Bieber wouldn’t speak to him, Johnson’s rep told CNN in May.
A neighbor accused Bieber of spitting on him and making threats during a heated confrontation outside his home last March, Whitmore said. It prompted a sheriff’s probe, but no charges followed.
