A 29-year-old man was arrested after he was allegedly caught skulking around Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s sprawling California mansion in the middle of the night.
Kevin Garcia Valdovinos, 29, was detained by the famous couple’s security team near the property’s entrance on Monday around 2:30 a.m., TMZ reported. They held him until authorities arrived at the massive home in Montecito and took him into custody, according to a spokesperson for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office.
Valdovinos was later booked on misdemeanor stalking charges, but he has since been released on $2,500 bail.
It’s not clear whether the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were at home with their young children — Archie, 4, and Lilibet, 1 — at the time of the arrest.
On Tuesday, 41-year-old Markle was in New York City alongside Harry and her mother Doria Ragland for the Ms. Foundation awards ceremony, where she was honored with the 2023 Women of Vision Award. During their visit, the couple and Ragland were involved in a “near catastrophic” car chase through Midtown Manhattan with the paparazzi, the royals said Wednesday. They say the incident nearly ended in a multiple-car crash.
The incident earlier this week marks the second time an intruder has been captured near their 18,000-square-foot home, perched on a sweeping 5.4 acres of property. On Christmas Eve 2020, a man named Nickolas Brooks, who seemingly drove from Ohio to the Golden State, was caught trespassing at the home and issued a warning., He returned two days later though, and he was slapped with a misdemeanor trespassing charge.
It came just months after Harry and Meghan purchased the home in July 2020 for S14.5 million.