A woman who stalked Harry Styles has been jailed and banned from seeing him perform.
Myra Carvalho, who appeared at Harrow crown court sitting at Hendon magistrates court in London, was said to have stalked the singer by sending him 8,000 cards in less than a month.
She was sentenced to 14 weeks’ imprisonment after pleading guilty on Tuesday to a charge of stalking involving serious alarm or distress, a court official said.
A 10-year restraining order was also imposed on Carvalho, who was told she was forbidden from attending any event where Styles was performing.
Carvalho, who had been staying at a backpacker hostel in south-west London, was also ordered not to contact the singer, directly or indirectly.
She was told not to enter an area of north-west London that was described in the court, the official added, and ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £134.
Carvalho sent the 30-year-old singer handwritten letters while in the UK, and ordered a series of cards for him online that were sent to his address, the court had previously heard.
Of the 8,000 cards sent, some were wedding cards and two of the letters were hand-delivered to Styles’s address, prosecutors said.
Carvalho is a Brazilian national who has been in the UK since December. Her family did not know she had travelled to the country, the court was told previously.
Appearing via video link from HMP Bronzefield in a hearing in February, Carvalho spoke only to confirm her name.
Styles has been targeted by a stalker before. In 2019, a homeless man who spent months camped outside the pop star’s home was found guilty of the offence. Styles first encountered Pablo Tarazaga-Orero outside his home on a wet night, and was “sad to see someone so young sleeping rough”, Hendon magistrates court heard.
He offered him money for a hotel or food and, in the coming weeks, began to see Tarazaga-Orero around regularly. He began showing up at Styles’s local pub up to four times a week, entering the establishment “anywhere between a minute and two minutes after [Styles] arrived”, leading the pop star to believe he was being followed.
The encounters made Styles feel “unsafe and uneasy” in his home, leading him to employ a night guard, lock his bedroom door at night and assess “weak spots” in his residence. “If I see people on multiple occasions, I view them differently than I would before,” Styles told the court.
Source: theguardian.com