attacker

EXCLUSIVE Emmerdale’s Joe Tate actor Ned Porteous has told The Mirror all about whether his character is capable of trying to kill someone after Billy Fletcher’s attack

Who attacked Billy in Emmerdale might have been revealed, or at least someone may have been ruled out.

Amid theories from viewers about who was to blame, Billy’s fate remains unknown. He’s in a coma, fighting for his life after being brutally attacked and left with a serious head injury.

Billy sustained a bleed on the brain, after Kerry Wyatt found her colleague lifeless on the floor of the depot where they work. He was lying with his head in a pool of blood, with his loved ones warned he’s in a bad way.

Kerry and boss Caleb Miligan were quick to point out to the police that Joe Tate may have attacked Billy. After all he had threatened Billy to Caleb, after Caleb told Joe about Billy and Dawn’s apparent kiss.

Of course it’s not the first time Joe has caused someone to be injured or killed, while it’s not like him to get his hands dirty. But has he taken a brutal revenge on Billy, or is he being framed?

Fans have mixed ideas on the truth, and now speaking exclusively to the Mirror, Joe actor Ned Porteous has had his say. He addressed whether Joe is capable of hurting Billy in this way, while he also teased whether his character is the real attacker.

With some fans saying it’s too obvious to be Joe, Ned discussed this and pointed out Joe did have it in him to commit the crime. That said, something he told us could hint that Joe is not to blame.

Asked if Joe could be at fault, he replied: “I think Joe has it in him to do a whole bunch of things. Yeah. I think the beauty of this character, and the fun I’ve been having with the character, is the duality between his capabilities for great good and great evil.

“I think as a thematic tool, Joe, and characters like Joe, are extremely useful for the screenwriters, because we can see that he is a good dude, but he has no practice at it. He’s volatile, he has a complete lack of control of his emotions.

“So, if you were to get to him, he’ll get you back sevenfold.” We then questioned whether if Joe was innocent, will he struggle to prove that innocence given Joe’s dark ways in the past.

He told us: “Absolutely. I think everything that Joe does in this village is guilty until proven innocent, because why on earth wouldn’t it be? We’ve only ever seen Joe do bad things to people, apart from the one or two people that he’s let close to himself and his heart that know that he’s not completely evil.”

So does this comment about not being completely evil and being “guilty until proven innocent” suggest Joe isn’t the one to blame? After all, some fans are suspecting Joe’s nemesis Caleb Miligan may have attacked Billy, not Joe.

Emmerdale airs weeknights at 8pm on ITV1 and ITVX. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

July 30 (UPI) — A federal jury has convicted the New Jersey man who attempted to murder writer Salman Rushdie on additional terrorism-related charges, including attempting to provide material support to the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah.

Hadi Matar of Fairview, N.J., was sentenced to 25 years in prison in a state court in May 2025 for trying to kill Rushdie on Aug. 12, 2022.

Matar rushed the stage and stabbed the India-born writer at New York’s Chautauqua Institution in Mayville, N.Y., before being subdued by audience members and taken into police custody. Rushdie lost vision in his right eye and suffered nerve damage as a result of the attack.

A federal jury in the Western District of New York on Wednesday convicted Matar on charges of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, engaging in an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries and providing material support to terrorists. Matar faces a maximum penalty of life in prison on the most serious charge when sentenced on Nov. 3.

“Hadi Matar, who was born and raised in the United States, chose to align his values with the terroristic values of the leaders of Iran, which often promote violence, and in this case, the call for murder,” U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York Michael DiGiacomo said in a statement.

“The defendant spent months planning and preparing to carry out what he hoped would be the execution of Salman Rushdie and possibly follow in the footsteps of martyrs he admired. Instead, his attempted act of terror failed, and Salman Rushdie survived, thanks to courageous members of the public and law enforcement, who saved Rushdie and captured Matar.”

The trial began July 22, and Rushdie, 79, testified.

DiGiacomo said Rushdie answered every question asked of him by the defense and prosecutors.

“It was very powerful,” DiGiacomo said.

“And at the end, at some point, Mr. Rushdie removed his glasses so the jury could see the extent of the injury to his eye that he no longer has vision it.”

Prosecutors said Matar was attempting to carry out the orders of Iran’s late spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who in 1989 called for Rushdie’s murder after the publication of his award-winning novel The Satanic Verses on the grounds that it was blasphemous to Islam.

The fatwa was reaffirmed in 2017 by Khomeini’s successor, Ali Khamenei, and endorsed by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah was killed Sept. 27, 2024, in Israeli airstrikes on Beirut, while Khamenei was killed Feb. 28 in joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran.

Federal prosecutors said during the trial that Matar had spent more than a year researching the fatwa before deciding to try to kill Rushdie and discussed it with people in Iran, Australia and Canada.

According to the Justice Department, Matar had surrounded himself with Hezbollah symbols ahead of the attack and had traveled to the institution that day with a false driver’s license bearing the name Hassan Mughniyeh, with Hassan being Nasrallah’s first name and Mughniyeh being the surname of Hezbollah’s former external security organization head, Imad Mughniyeh.

DiGiacomo told reporters following the conviction that ahead of the attack, Matar traveled by bus from New Jersey to Buffalo, then traveled toward the Chautauqua Institution.

On the morning of the attack, Matar visited a website run by Hezbollah and took screenshots of Hezbollah operatives who had died that month.

“The evidence presented in the trial showed that this attack was not spontaneous. It was deliberate. It was research. It was planned. It was motivated by violent extremist ideology,” Alan Davis, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Buffalo field office, said during the press conference.

“For more than a year, the defendant researched a decades-old fatwa, communicated with individuals overseas about carrying it out and embraced the propaganda and symbols of Hezbollah before traveling to western New York to commit this violent act.”

A former security guard for Drakeo the Ruler testified under oath that he saw rapper YG produce a knife and slash it toward him during the 2021 backstage fight in which Drakeo was fatally stabbed, according to recently obtained deposition excerpts.

Alrick Cooper III, who was part of Drakeo’s security detail at the Once Upon a Time in L.A. festival, said YG was “front and center” during the Dec. 18, 2021, brawl and was one of three men he saw carrying what appeared to be short, improvised knives. He said YG, whose real name is Keenon Jackson, was wearing a ski mask, but he recognized the rapper’s hazel eyes as he tried to protect Drakeo, whose legal name was Darrell Caldwell Jr. Representatives for YG did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The excerpts come from Cooper’s March 19, 2025, deposition, which surfaced last month in a court filing by attorneys representing Drakeo’s family in a civil lawsuit against festival organizers and security contractors. It adds more context to the fight after law enforcement investigating the killing searched a Burbank property and detained YG in the process on Thursday.

The California Highway Patrol, with help from the Burbank Police Department’s SWAT team, briefly detained YG while officers searched the property. He was released after the search and was not arrested.

YG has repeatedly denied involvement in Drakeo’s death. On his June 2026 song “We Know the Truth,” he rejected allegations connecting him to the killing and said he learned after arriving to perform at the festival that someone had been stabbed.

A CHP spokesperson said the agency “cannot comment as this is an ongoing and open investigation” when asked if YG was a suspect or person of interest in the case. No one has been arrested in the ongoing murder case. NBC Los Angeles reported that the warrant was served as part of the continuing homicide investigation. CHP told NBC that YG was present when officers arrived and was released when the search was completed.

Drakeo’s son and other relatives, along with Cooper, sued Live Nation, C3 Presents, Bobby Dee Presents and several security contractors in February 2022, alleging the companies involved in staging and securing the festival failed to protect Drakeo from a foreseeable attack. YG is not a defendant in the lawsuit.

‘Front and center’

Cooper testified that Drakeo’s group was confronted by at least 20 to 25 people backstage. When asked whether he recognized anyone in the opposing group, Cooper named only YG.

“He was directly involved in the fight?” an attorney for Drakeo’s family asked.

“Yeah,” Cooper answered. “Front and center.”

Cooper said the attackers divided into groups and surrounded Drakeo’s party near the artist entrance. Some wore red clothing, ski masks or hoodies and Cooper said festival security personnel failed to intervene and instead closed two gates that could have provided an escape route.

“They actually closed the gates and trapped us in to where we couldn’t leave,” Cooper testified. According to his account, one exit was blocked by security personnel while attackers swarmed the other side of the backstage area.

Cooper said he initially struck one of the approaching men and momentarily lost his footing. He then found himself fighting YG and a man he described as YG’s bodyguard, with Drakeo positioned a foot or two behind him and to his right.

“And then YG produced a knife from his left hand,” Cooper testified, describing the weapon as appearing to emerge from Jackson’s sleeve. “And when I saw that I just backed up.”

As the confrontation continued, Cooper said, the attackers moved toward Drakeo and “swarmed over” him. Police arrived almost simultaneously, according to Cooper, and began breaking up the fight.

Three men with knives

Cooper described the weapon he attributed to YG as a silver blade approximately three or four inches long. He said he did not see a handle and compared its appearance to an improvised prison shank.

“He was slashing at me with it, like getting me to back up,” Cooper testified. He said he was not stabbed.

Cooper said he saw two other men standing near YG with similar weapons. He described one man as being immediately beside YG and another as positioned behind and between them. Cooper said he concluded the men were armed after observing movements that differed from ordinary punching.

“Once I saw the stabbing, jabbing motion,” Cooper testified, he tried to move away from those individuals.

Cooper described one of the other men as a bald Black man, approximately 5 feet 9 inches or 5 feet 10 inches tall, with light-brown or hazel eyes and a blue patterned crew-neck shirt. He described the third as a similarly sized Black man with dreadlocks but said he could not remember the man’s clothing. Cooper estimated YG was approximately 6 feet 1 inch or 6 feet 2 inches tall.

Identifying YG behind a mask

Cooper acknowledged that the person he identified as YG was wearing a black balaclava that exposed only the area around his eyes. He said the man also wore a black bomber-style jacket, black pants with red stripes and shiny black shoes.

Asked how he could make the identification with much of the man’s face covered, Cooper said he had met YG “a lot” and recognized his eyes, body type, height, walk and demeanor.

Cooper also testified that members of the attacking group taunted Drakeo during the confrontation.

He recalled hearing statements including “Is this Drakeo?,” “Is that who I think it is?,” “What you want to do?” and “Now we finally got him.” Cooper also reported hearing Blood gang expressions, including “soo whoop” and “Sup, Blood,” and seeing individuals beating their chests.

Earlier in the deposition, Cooper said he had previously intervened when the two rappers encountered each other outside a recording studio.

According to Cooper, YG approached Drakeo and asked, “What’s up [with] all that internet stuff?” Cooper said he had to defuse that encounter.

Cooper also cited Drakeo’s 2021 song “IngleWeird,” interviews and music released by artists associated with the two camps as evidence of an escalating dispute. He recalled a summer 2021 interview featuring YG and two other artists in which, according to Cooper, someone said, “We don’t do that internet stuff, the homies going to get you.”

Cooper testified that the history led him to warn Drakeo before the festival that more security was needed. He believed there was a substantial chance the two artists or their entourages would encounter each other as Drakeo left the stage or festival grounds.

All parties will be back in court for the first of two hearings beginning Aug. 13 covering motions to dismiss the case brought by Bobby Dee Presents and Live Nation.

July 22 (UPI) — The man who rushed a stage to attack author Salman Rushdie will face federal terrorism charges in a trial that began Wednesday in New York.

Hadi Matar, 28, was found guilty of murder in state court last year and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the August 2022 attack that left Rushdie blind in one eye and without use of one hand.

The federal case will determine if the attack was an act of terrorism and if he was carrying out a fatwa against Rushdie, set by the former Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, or if it was for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, or neither.

Khomeini, then the ayatollah of Iran, created the fatwa in 1989 because of Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, published in 1988. Hardline Muslims considered the book blasphemous because of the way it portrayed the Prophet Muhammad.

The attack on Rushdie happened at the Chautauquah Institution in Chautauquah, N.Y., as he was delivering a speech for more than 1,000 people on writers in political exile. Matar rushed the stage and stabbed Rushdie more than a dozen times.

Matar is a U.S. citizen of Lebanese origin who was raised in New Jersey and California. His friends and relatives said that after some professional and academic frustration, he became religious. His mother told The New York Times that she could not support him.

Rushdie, 79, wrote and published in 2024, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, a memoir about the attack and his recovery.

Matar had written in his notebook a list of pros and cons to attacking Rushdie. The Times reported that a page provided by prosecutors showed that he wrote one reason not to do it was: “Could make life worse. But I doubt that. It kind of sucks already.”