UPDATE
Mar 27, 2024 2:30 AM CDT
Taylor Swift's dad won't have to deal with any trouble Down Under. Australian police said on Tuesday that Scott Swift won't be charged following accusations that he assaulted a paparazzo. TMZ confirms the decision by New South Wales Police came after an investigation into Ben McDonald's claims. The 51-year-old paparazzo alleged the 72-year-old threw a punch at him in the wee hours of Feb. 27 as the singer exited a yacht at the Neutral Bay Wharf following her final show in Sydney, reports the BBC. A rep for the singer had accused McDonald and another photographer of "aggressively pushing their way towards Taylor" at the time.
Feb 27, 2024 12:30 AM CST
Australian authorities are investigating an alleged assault on a paparazzo by Taylor Swift's father, Scott Swift. The photographer told police the elder Swift punched him in the face around 2:30am Tuesday, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. "I was just out on the job chasing Taylor," Ben McDonald, chief executive of Matrix Media Group, tells the newspaper.
"She got off a super-yacht at Neutral Bay and walked up the wharf with an umbrella over her head and a couple of security [guards] around her. Security sort of pushed us around with the umbrellas. Then her dad decided to add to the mix and throw a punch in." The incident took place mere hours after the end of the Australian leg of Taylor's Eras Tour on Monday night, the AP reports.
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McDonald says he was not seriously hurt in the alleged attack, but that the alleged punch was unnecessary because the security guards had the situation under control. A Swift spokesperson says "two individuals [there was another photographer with McDonald at the scene] were aggressively pushing their way towards Taylor, grabbing at her security personnel, and threatening to throw a female staff member into the water." McDonald says that's not true, and that the photographers had kept things "very civil." (More Taylor Swift stories.)
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