Britney Spears was arrested in California this week on suspicion of driving under the influence, according to law enforcement records.
Spears was arrested in Ventura County by the California Highway Patrol, according to Ventura County Sheriff's Office inmate records cited by USA Today.
Spears, 44, was taken into custody around 3 a.m. Thursday and released shortly after 6 a.m., the records show.
Soon after the incident, Spears' Instagram account appeared to be deleted.
No further details about the circumstances of the arrest were immediately available.
The arrest comes amid renewed attention on the singer's personal life.
The arrest comes weeks after Spears was reportedly seen driving erratically following a night out with a friend.
In October, a video circulated showing Spears leaving a restaurant in Thousand Oaks, California, before getting into the driver's seat of her black BMW.
Several people were reportedly seen attempting to stop her as she entered the vehicle.
An onlooker told the Daily Mail that the singer "nearly ran over her friend while pulling out" of the parking lot.
However, a restaurant manager who interacted with Spears that evening disputed claims that she had been drinking.
"She was super chill and really nice," Oliver Wynn, a general manager at the Westlake, Calif., location of an upscale Mexican restaurant chain, told Us Weekly. "She just kind of hung out, grabbed a bite to eat and left."
Wynn said Spears was "not intoxicated" and did not order alcohol with her meal.
Spears' arrest comes after a California judge ended her conservatorship in 2021.
It had governed her personal and financial decisions since 2008. Spears was 39 when the court ended the legal arrangement.
She had been placed under the conservatorship at age 26 following a widely publicized breakdown a year earlier.
Spears has spoken publicly in recent months about her relationships with family members. In a February Instagram post, Spears criticized relatives without naming anyone directly.
"For those of you in your family that have said to help you is to isolate you and make you feel unbelievably left out … they were wrong. We can forgive as people but u don't ever forget," Spears wrote at the time, according to People. "Yearning and longing for contact is always crucial !!!"
Spears added that she believes she is "incredibly lucky to even be alive with how my family treated me once in my life and now I'm scared of them."
Last month, it was confirmed that Spears sold her music catalog, though the terms of the deal and the amount she received were not disclosed.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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