Paparazzo Charged in Actress Incident

A paparazzo was charged Friday with six misdemeanor counts for allegedly disrupting a birthday outing by actress Reese Witherspoon and her 6-year-old daughter to Disney’s California Adventure theme park in September.

The Anaheim city attorney’s office charged Todd K. Wallace, 44, of Beverly Hills with child endangerment, interfering with a person’s liberty and multiple counts of battery, including one on a child, Assistant City Atty. Patrick Ahle said.

Anaheim Police Sgt. Rick Martinez said Wallace allegedly struck a 5-year-old child with his camera as he shoved to get shots of the actress and her children.

The others he is charged with battering are the child’s mother, who is a friend of Witherspoon, and two Disney employees, Martinez said.

Martinez said Wallace became physically and verbally abusive and used expletives when the group resisted having pictures taken. He was initially arrested for using his body to push a Disney tour guide and another Disney employee who came to the group’s aid, Martinez said.

The incident left some of the children in tears, police said.

Wallace, according to state corrections records, was convicted in Los Angeles County in 1993 of second-degree burglary and receiving goods by fraud. He served more than four years in prison.

Blair Berk, Witherspoon’s attorney, said the tabloids that buy paparazzi photographs must come to realize that “battering and endangering a child to get a picture for their magazines is criminal and not business as usual.”

Wallace, whose only listed address is a Beverly Hills post office box, could not be reached for comment.

Police and prosecutors in August decided not to charge paparazzi whom Witherspoon, star of “Legally Blonde” and “Just Like Heaven,” said chased her from her gym and trapped her outside the West Los Angeles gated community where she lives with her husband, actor Ryan Phillippe, and their two children.

Wallace is due in court Wednesday.