TikTok prankster Mizzy avoids jail after stealing phone from woman and fleeing police
14 June 2024, 08:39 | Updated: 14 June 2024, 08:41
TikTok prankster Mizzy has avoided jail as he was handed a community order after he stole a woman’s phone while he was riding on an e-bike in central London.
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Mizzy, whose real name is Bacari-Bronze O'Garro, was riding a lime bike through central London on 15 June 2022 when he snatched the phone out of the woman’s hand, Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court heard on Thursday.
Police officers pursued the teenager, then aged 17, after they noticed him “cycling in a way that they deemed him to be trying to get away from something”, prosecuting Amy Gault told the court. He was later arrested.
In April, O’Garro who is known for his controversial “pranks” on TikTok, was found guilty of theft.
On Thursday, district judge Michael Oliver ordered the teenager, now 19, to pay £500 in compensation to his victim alongside a 12-month community order.
He must complete 100 hours of unpaid work and 15 days of rehabilitation activity under the community order.
Judge Oliver said the order would “serve to punish you and make reparation to the community at large".
O’Garro was wearing a blue tracksuit with a blue-and-white scarf on his head when he snatched the phone from victim Ruby Hewitt’s hand while she was in Highbury New Park in Islington.
The court heard how he left Ms Hewitt “stressed, anxious and quite scared for my safety” after the incident.
Three Metropolitan Police officers in an unmarked police car, who did not witness the incident, later became suspicious of O'Garro, who was exhibiting "erratic behaviour, going in and out of the road and moving on to the pavement”.
O’Garro fled the officers and threw the phone over a fence into buses before an officer forced him off the bike when he ran away on foot before being arrested.
Keren Weekes, mitigating, said the teenager's previous detention at a young offenders institution had "had a detrimental effect on his mental health" and he was now "working to make a positive change in society".
O'Garro, who has a son, was undertaking two internships - one at a content creation business and the other at a video news outlet - alongside a vocational qualification course in creative media, she added.
Ms Weekes said he was also co-leading the production of an anti-knife crime video as part of his internship for Video Production News.
O’Garro became infamous with a string of videos in which he broke into people's homes, ripped up a library book, snatched an elderly woman's dog, entered a train driver's cab, and asked strangers on the street if they "want to die".
The court heard O'Garro had three previous convictions at the time of the offence and had been sentenced for a separate theft in July 2022, receiving a youth rehabilitation order with a curfew.
The judge said the phone theft "really ought to have been dealt with at the same time”.
He also said he had considered the fact O'Garro was under 18 when the offence took place, and was therefore "a youth in the eyes of the law".
