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Man accused of killing Potter actor and knifing five others
Benedict Moore-Bridger, Evening Standard27 May 2008
A man appeared in court today charged with the murder of Harry Potter actor Robert Knox and wounding five others.
Karl Bishop, 21, was accused of stabbing the 18-year-old during a fight outside the Metro Bar in Sidcup in the early hours of Saturday.
Unemployed Bishop, of Sidcup, was also charged with knifing four other teenagers and 21-year-old Dean Saunders, who may have been left paralysed.
Wearing a pink rugby shirt and sporting a black eye, Bishop stared ahead of him and did not enter a plea. He spoke only to confirm his name and address when he appeared at Bexley magistrates court.
Knox, of Sidcup, an actor since the age of 11, had finished filming the latest Harry Potter movie just a few days before he died outside the bar. He is believed to have been protecting his younger brother Jamie, 17, an Olympic hopeful in tae kwon do.
Saunders suffered serious spinal injuries in the incident. Doctors have warned he has a 50 per cent of never walking again.
Four of Knox's friends - Andrew Dormer, Nicky Lee Jones, Charlie Grimley and Tom Hopkins, aged from 16 to 21 - needed hospital treatment after being stabbed in the fight.
No application for bail was made and Bishop was remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey on 2 September. His court appearance came as it emerged that Bishop attended the same primary school as Robert, whose friends have paid tribute to him on the social networking site Facebook.
Among hundreds of messages, Cathy Allen, a Reading University student, wrote: "I went to primary school with both these people, I can't believe something like this has happened." Alice Walker, who said she was with Robert on the night he died, wrote: "We were having such a good night. All of us were together just having the usual jokes, not a care in the world." Robert had appeared in The Bill, the 2004 film King Arthur, and in the BBC sitcom After You've Gone with actor Nicholas Lyndhurst last year.
His father Colin, 55, said: "With knives there are no winners and only losers. If you are a person who carries a knife, think about the consequences. There's a lot of fear out there and basically someone has to change the way we think."
Earlier this month 16-year-old Jimmy Mizen died after his throat was slashed outside a bakery. Both he and Knox had been members of Sidcup Rugby Club.
• Five men were stabbed in nearby Bromley last night. Two suffered serious injuries to their abdomens and another was taken to hospital after a fight outside the Bird In Hand pub. Four men in their thirties have been arrested.
Reader views (1)
I think that anybody carrying a knife should receive a £20,000 fine or receive a jail sentence for 5 years, there has got to be a deterrent to stop these people. Problem is these people have never had discipline from home or school, and we are now paying for this. Lets go back to schools being allowed to cane and discipline, and parents being allowed to smack children when they have done wrong.
- Andrew Rice, Wokingham, 27/05/2008 17:39
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