Law & Politics
Sam Taylor-Johnson’s House Raided by Police
Lorena Muñoz-Alonso
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The Turner Prize-nominated artist and film director Sam Taylor-Johnson (nee Wood) had her London house stormed by police forces last week. According to the Daily Mail, the raid was prompted by a former Iranian soldier, who alerted the authorities after he spotted an assault rifle sitting on a desk by a window of the house the former Young British Artist shares with her second husband, Hollywood actor Aaron Johnson.
Residents of the affluent area of Primrose Hill were awaken in the early hours of last Friday to the sound of Taylor-Johnson’s house alarm, which was set off by a dozen of heavily armed policemen as they attempted to enter. As no one was in, the police had to wake up a magistrate judge to get a warrant granting access to the £15.5m property.
The machine gun found by the police was a deactivated M16 rifle, given to Mrs Taylor-Johnson by the charity Peace One Day as part of an art project, reports Ham & High. Mrs Taylor-Johnson, who is currently directing the film adaptation of the erotic best-seller 50 Shades of Gray, began working with the anti-violence charity in 2012, when she and a number of other artists were invited by fellow YBA Jake Chapman to transform an AK-47 rifle into a work of art. She might want to keep it in a more discreet spot in the future …
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