04/03/2009

Man Found Guilty Of Harry Potter Actor Murder

A 22-year-old man has been today found guilty of murdering Harry Potter actor Rob Knox in a vicious "revenge" attack.

Karl Bishop, from Sidcup, described as a "habitual knife carrier" attacked the 18-year-old after a fight outside the Metro Bar in Sidcup last May.

The Old Bailey heard Bishop armed himself with two kitchen knives to confront Rob and his friends outside the south east London bar, last May. His face was said to have been "screwed up with rage".

Mr Knox was stabbed five times as he defended his brother Jamie from Bishop. Five others were injured in the fight.

Bishop was also convicted of wounding the 18-year-old's friend Dean Saunders, 23, but was found not guilty of wounding another friend Tom Hopkins, aged 19.

The judge Mr Justice Bean gave the jury of three women and nine men a majority direction on three other wounding charges.

Brian Altman, QC, prosecuting, said: "Unhappily, his courage and his sense of duty were to cost him his life."

The court heard the 22-year-old was acting "in revenge" as he had been involved in a clash with Mr Knox and his friends the week before the killing, and again earlier that night, before he went home and armed himself with two kitchen knives.

The court heard that following the first confrontation between Bishop and the 18-year-old, Bishop told him: "I'm going to come back next week and someone's going to die."

Rob Knox, from Swanley, Kent, played the part of Marcus Belby in the film 'Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince'.

(JM/BMcC)

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