22-year-old actor Jamie Waylett, who famously played the villain Gravybeard in the Harry Potter movies– wait, wait, someone’s handing me a note… sorry, check that, he played the villain Crabbe in the Harry Potter movies, and he’s been sentenced to two years in prison for looting during the London riots. That poor bastard, British prisons are terrible! You spend all day weaving powdered wigs for barristers and only get tea twice a day!
Mr. Waylett, 22, who played the all-around Hogwarts bully Crabbe in six “Harry Potter” films, was found guilty of violent disorder during the July riots by a London court on Tuesday, but cleared of intending to destroy or damage property, after video footage showed him holding a gas bomb.
According to the BBC, closed-circuit security camera images depicted Mr. Waylett drinking from a bottle of Champagne that he had been given by another rioter who had looted it from a supermarket and holding a gas bottle with a wick made from a rag.
Simon Carr, the judge in Mr. Waylett’s case, was quoted by the BBC as saying that he accepted a jury’s verdict that the actor did not intend to throw the homemade bomb, “but merely being in possession of it would have been terrifying to anyone who saw you,” the judge said. [NYTimes]
Imagine if some poor soul had dropped a monogrammed hankie!
Waylett was caught on camera during the third day of last summer’s violence in Chalk Farm, Wood Green crown court heard.
He was first spotted dashing across Chalk Farm Road at 10.45pm after a gang smashed in the front windows of a Sainsbury’s supermarket, said prosecutor Rebekah Hummerstone.
“Moments later, he accepted a bottle of sparkling wine from a friend who is also seen on the footage carrying a number of bottles,” she added.
Around 90 minutes later, Waylett was again spotted on CCTV with his hood up and could be seen trying to cover the lower part of his face with a scarf, the court heard.
“He was picked up by CCTV two minutes later. He and other members of his group were carrying petrol bombs,” said Ms Hummerstone. [ThisIsLondon]
In all seriousness, two years in prison for being an accomplice to a smashed window and holding a Molotov cocktail that he never threw seems waaay steep. I don’t know much about the British legal system, but that dude in that one Specials song smashed up his ex-girlfriends’ window and her property, and he only got five months. This poor bastard, if only he’d had Judge Roughneck.
Note: I still have no idea what the hell this song’s about, but it seems vaguely racist.