Awww, poor Julius. The Croatian authorities arrested Beyonce’s bodyguard, full name Julius Hollander, today on charges of assaulting a paparazzi and destroying his personal property. Authorities temporarily stripped Beyonce, Jay Z and Julius of their passports before ejecting Julius from the country.
The incident occurred on Tuesday night when Beyonce and Jay Z dined at Dubrovnik restaurant Gil’s. As the couple left, Julius clashed with overzealous paparazzi who had assembled outside. Julius aimed a flashlight at the cameras hoping to disrupt their flashes. When that trick didn’t work, he got into a physical altercation with one of the paps.
That pap, Dragana Banovica, filed a police complaint against Julius claiming the brawny bodyguard assaulted him and threw his camera equipment into the sea.
A video that was posted to the Internet Wednesday morning shows the pap aggressively hitting Julius with a large tripod stand, the type that’s used to hold large video cameras. Julius reacted by throwing the heavy tripod into the water.
The police caught up with Beyonce, Jay Z and Julius, their lone bodyguard, on a private island off Korcula in Croatia. Julius was arrested and all 3 had their passports stripped temporarily.
Julius appeared in court today where he spent about two hours in front of a judge. He was accompanied by a Croatian lawyer and translators. He pleaded guilty to reduced charges of public disorder and disturbance of the peace before being ejected from the country.
I blame Jay Z and Beyonce for this. When you are an international star worth millions, you can’t be cheap and only hire one bodyguard. Even money-grubbing Sean Combs (as stingy as he is) takes a small army of bodyguards with him when he leaves the country. Hopefully Jay Z and Beyonce will learn from this incident. It could have been much worse.
