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Britney a threat to herself |
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Written by Jo Piazza, MCT
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Tuesday, 25 September 2007 |
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If Britney Spears' former bodyguard Tony Barretto can be taken at his word, the embattled popster is nearing her expiration date, and not for her career — for her life.
Barretto, 28, a former bounty hunter turned professional muscle, viewed his job guarding the singer as on the level of Secret Service duty.
The gentle giant, who could just be the guardian angel Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1, have been silently begging for, claims he would have taken a bullet for his charges. But the 6-foot-7, 448-pounder said more often than not he was baby-sitting the slurry singer and her children to protect all of them from her unpredictable madness.
Now off the Spears' payroll for neglecting to pick up one of her wayward fedoras, Barretto is making the media rounds, airing all Spears' dirty laundry for any media outlet willing to listen, and perhaps pay.
His lawyer, bulldog attorney Gloria Allred, has been standing diligently at his side, as she did Monday morning when Barretto carefully waded through "Today" show host Matt Lauer's questions about his former employer. Barretto said he was coming forward with claims about Spears' erratic and shocking behavior only to protect her two children.
But why does he care so much?
The quiet-spoken guard and California native has two kids of his own, and his own mom gave birth to him when she was only 16, leaving him with a soft spot for young mothers in peril.
After only a couple of months with Spears, the period immediately after she completed a stint in the Promises rehab center, Barretto feared she had reached a point where she would either harm herself or her children. His revelations, now in court documents, could publicly push Spears back into rehab and save the kids from Mommie Dearest.
"There was a time when I thought she was going to hurt the kids," he told London's Daily Mail over the weekend. "She sent the nanny home. She sent her best friend and personal assistant, Alli Sims, home. Britney hates to be alone, so this was worrying.
"One of the bodyguards who had been with her longest said she was beginning to shut down as she had before she shaved her head. He said she'd been talking about suicide then, and this was the same. Britney was sobbing."
Barretto's colleague said, "I'm worried about the kids. Don't let her go swimming with them."
Barretto was shocked. He asked if Spears would drown her children.
His colleague replied, "I don't know."
Then Barretto says he cried, asking. "How am I supposed to protect someone like that?"
Barretto said Spears' reckless daily behavior could endanger the children.
"She'd put the kids at risk by driving on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic for no reason at all, along windy roads up in the hills. I was in the car behind, going, 'Oh my God!' The kids were in the backseat. She ended up making illegal U-turns, going through red lights. She almost got hit twice on the wrong side of the road," Barretto said.
Legally, Spears shouldn't even have been behind the wheel. She was charged last week with two misdemeanor counts of hit and run and driving without a license after an incident last fall, but couldn't pass the driver's test when she went to the DMV with Barretto.
"We took her to the DMV. They took her to a private room, but she didn't pass. She failed the written test horribly. She got only three answers correct out of 35. She was too intimidated to take the test again," he remembers. But that didn't stop her from getting behind the wheel again and again.
Barretto was also a witness to her drug use. He said he watched as Spears snorted a white powdery substance in the Teddy's nightclub last April and guarded the door on her long trips to the bathroom to allegedly do drugs. Once the singer even asked her bodyguard to hold a curtain around her head as she snorted white powder from her hand with a straw.
And the strong man came to Spears' rescue when she was holed up in a hotel room after a bender with singer Howie Day.
According to Barretto, a tweaked-out Day was holding an even higher Spears captive in the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood. He describes the room as a mess. "Dozens of bottles of hard liquor from the mini-bar were mostly empty. There were cigarettes and what appeared to be narcotics next to the bed, straws and a powder that appeared to be cocaine. Across the room was a glass pipe for smoking drugs"
Day was on the bed in his boxers. Spears' eyes were huge. "She was upset, kept shaking, biting her nails and sweating. She was really high," Barretto told the Daily Mail.
Spears may not have even reached the bottom yet. But friends and family are saying she is close to entering rehab again. It could just be Barretto who gets her to go. | Only registered users can write comments.
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