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Why are you here? You can’t be here, you can’t be doing this. Get out of here and leave me alone

Bieber landed no more than three punches through the window of the parked van, then “realized he wasn’t getting anywhere,” as Gillis is a much larger man, “twice his size,” as Gillis put it. Still, Gillis was sore in his shoulder afterwards, and both he and the other photographer, Sean O’Neill, 32, both of Toronto, were “very much upset,” Mr. Murdoch said.

Neither made a victim impact statement, and in fact, both plead guilty to trespassing the following day on the Bieber property near Stratford, the town where Bieber grew up before becoming a global superstar.

Appearing in court by video link from a lawyer’s office in California, wearing a white dress shirt, standing respectfully with his hands folded in front of him, Bieber declined to speak on his own behalf when offered the chance by Judge Kathryn McKerlie.

“No ma’am,” he said.

She imposed a fine of $750 for the careless driving, and granted an absolute discharge on the assault charge.

“The lesson in all of this is to think before you act in the future,” the judge said.

The lesson in all of this is to think before you act in the future

Stratford’s most famous son, who has walked the tightrope between musical icon and cautionary tale, still considers Stratford a kind of home, and it is important to him as a respite from his high profile life, in which his frequent transgressions are documented by a ravenous celebrity media, said his lawyer Brian Greenspan.

On this day last summer, he and Gomez took an ATV that seats two people, one in front of the other, to the nearby home of a family member, driving on country roads with no helmets, unaware they were being staked out by Gillis and O’Neill, both established paparazzi who had shot them before.