Life imitates art as devil child actor bashes cyclists
As a child actor he impaled a priest with a flagpole, sliced off a photographer’s head with a sheet of glass, made his nanny hang herself, and quite possibly deterred a generation of parents from naming their child Damien.
Now Harvey Stephens, the British businessman who played the child Antichrist in the 1976 horror film The Omen, has been given a 12-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, for punching two cyclists in the face.
He was sentenced at Maidstone crown court in Kent yesterday – Friday the 13th in Britain.
Stephens, a former City of London trader whose company, Venom Designs, makes jetskis and motorcycles, was driving his Audi RS6 in Westerham, Kent, an area popular with cyclists, last July when he came up tooting his horn behind two middle-aged cyclists, Alex Manley and Mark Richardson.
Stephens, 46, aggressively overtook the cyclists, and one of them made a hand gesture as he passed.
Stephens pulled over and punched both riders in the head, held down Manley and called him a c..., and smashed a helmet worth £120.
The attack ended only when another driver came past and saw the fight, beeped his horn and told Stephens to stop. He did, and fled in his car.
At a hearing last month, Stephens pleaded guilty to actual bodily harm and criminal damage.
Judge Martin Joy said it was ‘‘a serious case of road rage, quite plainly a sustained attack’’.
Stephens was ordered to attend a rehabilitation course and do 150 hours of unpaid work, and told to pay compensation of £1000 to each victim, and an extra £120 for the damaged helmet.
Meanwhile, a BBC Crimewatch presenter has been accused of exaggerating a London road rage incident that he filmed and posted online, to boost his profile, a court has heard.
Jeremy Vine said he feared he would be violently assaulted by a young mother in the ‘‘scary’’ confrontation. He was giving evidence at Hammersmith magistrates court yesterday in the trial of Shanique Sheena Pearson, 22, following the incident in August 2016.
Footage from cameras mounted on Vine’s bike was played to the court. He was cycling through Kensington on his way home from work when he became aware of Pearson’s car behind him, he said. She sounded her horn, and Vine braked.
Pearson got out of her car and tried to physically move Vine and his bike, saying: ‘‘I could’ve hit you and been done for murder.’’
She then overtook him, but Vine attempted to take a photo of her car as she was waiting at traffic lights. She got out again, saying: ‘‘Do you want me to knock you out?’’
Pearson’s lawyer, James O’Keeffe, accused Vine of exaggerating how scared he was for dramatic effect.
‘‘What you wanted all along was footage for your Facebook page,’’ he said, pointing out that the video has been watched 1 million times.