A man was arrested Wednesday evening on suspicion of a public order offense and possession of an offensive weapon after he was reported “behaving in an intimidating manner” near the Sandringham home of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew, Norfolk Constabulary said Thursday.
“Officers attended, and the man was arrested on suspicion of a public order offense and possession of an offensive weapon,” the force said in a statement. The suspect was being held for questioning at a nearby police station, and police did not specify what type of weapon was involved.
The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that a man wearing a ski mask ran toward the former royal while shouting abuse as Andrew was out walking his dogs near the royal family’s Sandringham Estate. Andrew and his protection officer got in their car and sped away, the paper reported.
Andrew, 66, the younger brother of King Charles III, moved to the king’s private Sandringham Estate, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of London, after he was evicted from his longtime home near Windsor Castle following revelations about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. He now lives at Marsh Farm, a property on the estate, after leaving Royal Lodge last year. He was stripped of all his honors and titles and banished from public view by the royal family after years of scandal over his money woes and links to questionable characters, including Epstein, a wealthy investor and convicted sex offender.
One of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Giuffre, alleged that she was forced to have sex with the then-prince three times starting when she was 17. Andrew denied the allegations but eventually settled the case for an undisclosed sum and acknowledged Giuffre’s suffering as a victim of sex trafficking. Giuffre died by suicide in April 2025 at age 41.
In February 2026, Andrew became the first senior British royal in almost 400 years to be arrested when he was held for hours by British police on suspicion of misconduct in public office in a case related to his links to Epstein. Police previously said they were “assessing” reports that Mountbatten-Windsor sent trade information to Epstein in 2010, when the former prince was the United Kingdom’s special envoy for international trade. Correspondence between the two men was released by the U.S. Justice Department along with millions of pages of documents from the American investigation into Epstein.