Britney Spears’ first husband Jason Alexander arrested for stalking the pop star

Singer Britney Spears’ ex-husband Jason Alexander was arrested and charged with stalking and held on US$100,000 bail after he allegedly tried to crash the pop star’s wedding on June 9.

US media reported that Ventura County (California) prosecutors also charged Alexander with misdemeanor trespassing, two misdemeanor counts of battery and a misdemeanor vandalism charge. Spears was granted a three-year restraining order against Alexander by a Ventura County Superior Court judge.

Alexander pleaded not guilty to all charges and denied all allegations against him.

Spears’ attorney Matthew Rosengart said after the hearing that authorities and prosecutors “are clearly taking this very, very seriously. I’m personally outraged by what happened,” he said, emphasizing the felony stalking charge. “It’s a very serious matter. This was more than just a quote ‘wedding crash.’ This was an intrusion,” said Rosengart, as reported by the Associated Press.

Spears’ ex-husband attempted to disrupt the singer’s June 9 wedding to Sam Asghari, her boyfriend of four years, by slipping into her home several hours before the couple was set to wed in a private ceremony. Alexander was arrested outside Spears’ mansion in Thousand Oaks, and was initially ordered held on US$2,500 bail over the incident.

Alexander married the pop star in 2004 during a trip to Las Vegas (Nevada, USA), but the two divorced 55 hours later. In this latest incident, he successfully dodged security guards around Spears’ mansion and began recording and live-streaming the wedding preparations on Instagram. “Britney Spears invited me here. She’s my first wife, my only wife. I’m her first husband. I’m here to crash the wedding,” he shouted at security officers during the livestream, before being arrested.

Spears and Asghari had planned a small, private wedding with fewer than 100 hundred guests, and didn’t invite the singer’s parents or children. But photos that circulated after the event showed that it was a lavish affair during which the bride changed dresses four times–the wedding dress designed by Donatella Versace, and three other short dresses for dancing. Versace was in attendance, along with Paris Hilton, Selena Gomez, Drew Barrymore and Madonna. Spears and Asghari arrived in a white carriage decorated with pink roses, and pulled by a white horse.

After her brief marriage to Alexander in early 2004, Spears married dancer Kevin Federline later that year. The couple had two children together, Sean Preston and Jaden James. She lost custody of their children in 2007, and regained it in 2008 when the couple reached a joint custody agreement. In April, Spears announced that she and Asghari were expecting a child, her third and his first. Just a month later, they announced that they had lost the baby.