A photographer was found guilty of assault this evening after grabbing the shoulder of Heather Mills-McCartney and spinning her around to get a better picture.
Ms McCartney-Mills, 39, was attacked by Jay Kaycappa as she cycled home to the exclusive Western Esplanade area in Hove, near Brighton. She sought refuge in a pedestrian subway, when she saw the paparazzi were attempting to photograph her.
The pictures taken by Kaycappa became vital evidence in the trial and prosecutors claimed that a four-second gap between frames had allowed the photographer to carry out the assault.
“I panicked and thought I’ll go back the other way and that’s when I turned round and saw Mr Kaycappa,” Ms Mills-McCartney told Brighton Magistrates’ Court. “I felt concerned... because I had one there and one there and I felt like a trapped animal.”
Kaycappa was also found guilty of assaulting Ms Cartney-Mills’s friend Mark Payne on the following evening, when he returned to take more pictures as he covered her failing relationship with ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney.
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During the three-day trial the court heard that Kaycappa, 32, had a criminal record stretching to more than 130 offences, many linked to theft and fraud. The magistrate Juliet Smith said his evidence had been “confused and contradictory”.
Kaycappa claimed that when the police arrived outside Ms Mills-McCartney’s home to arrest him, the paparazzi thought they were there to speak to the former model. “We thought Heather might have been caught kerb crawling,” he said. “There is a lot of rumours about her taking cocaine and that.”
Ms McCartney-Mills claimed during the trial that photographers like Kaycappa were insatiable. “How anyone didn’t find Saddam Hussein, they just should have sent a load of journalists. They find everything,” she said.
Father of three Kaycappa, of The Hurdles, Fareham, Hampshire, will be sentenced on August 16, Ms Mills-McCartney suggested that a custodial sentence would be excessive and community service would “sort him out”.