TikTok prankster Mizzy has said he plans to turn his life around following his release from prison - as he apologised for his "wild and reckless" video stunts.
Mizzy, real name Bacari-Bronze O’Garro, became infamous last year after a string of viral TikTok 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".
He was widely branded a "menace", and was in November sentenced to 18 weeks in prison after breaking an earlier court order that prohibited him from filming people without their consent.
The judge said he had "caused innocent members of the public significant harm and distress".
Mr O'Garro has now been released after serving six weeks of his prison sentence, and says his time behind bars helped him to reflect on his actions.
In his first interview since being freed, the 19-year-old father-of-one told London Live: "I acknowledge that [my actions] were wrong, and they shouldn't be done.
"It sunk in that 'ah, man's actually doing crazy stuff'. When I watched the [videos] back, I've been like 'oh that's not very nice is it?'""I've learnt a lot, but mainly to be empathetic," he added.
"If I had empathy from the start, then none of this would really have happened. I would have been like 'this is bad, what am I doing?'"
Asked what he would say to the people he targeted in his pranks, he said: "I'd say sorry, first of all. Sorry - I didn't mean for it to get out of hand.
"I was just having fun. In my circumstances, being a young father and trying to make it out of what I've been put into, I just done whatever I could do.
"But it wasn't right at the end of the day. It wasn't right. And I do acknowledge that.
"I feel like I wasn't empathetic to other people, and now that's changed."
Raised in Hackney by a single mother, surrounded by "a lot of friends who do crime", Mr O'Garro said he saw social media as a way to make his name and improve his life.
He said he had been "gassed" when his videos first went viral, and he'd looked at his phone to see "millions and millions of views" streaming in.
He said he "wouldn't care" about the contents of the videos.
"I'd be like 'yeah I've got a viral video'," he said.
"But now...I realise that yeah, it was actually kind of wrong, me trolling this person, or embarrassing this person on camera and then posting it to the world to see.
"At the end of the day, that's all my past now and I'm trying to change better for the future."
Mr O'Garro said he would still like to make prank videos in future, but would want to follow YouTubers who "are doing it in a way that's not...harming the person, but is drawing a smile to both parties".
He contrasted this to his own previous stunts, which he said were "not even pranks - they're more crimes".
"I don't really need to do pranks in the way I've done them before, in wild, reckless manners," he said.
"I'm gonna try to change it for the better, and do more public videos that are, let us say, more welcoming to people...more influencer stuff, more music, boxing, try to get things back into shape."
He said he would like to do more videos that involve him "just talking to the public and the youth about my experience, and opening it up to their experience as well".
But for the next two years, his court-imposed criminal behaviour (CBO) order bars him from sharing videos on social media, while social media sites have independently banned him from their platforms.
He said he plans to use that time to attend college, apply for jobs and take drama classes, adding he plans to explore modelling and acting.
"I need to build up my reputation again," he said.
He urged others to learn from his experience.
"Don't go down the way that I went down, because look where it ended up," he cautioned.
"I went to prison, I got sectioned. So much different things have happened to me. I can't even secure a proper job now.
"My life is going down, and it's only for me to bring it back up. You can continue making [your own life] go up or you can bring it down, so it's on you whether you want to do that - simple as."
"You don't want to go to jail," he added. "Jail is not a place you want to be, being restricted to four walls all day, and getting told when to eat, where to go toilet, when to shower, and being around other people that are committing worse crimes, doing worse things...it's not it.
"Many fights, many bad stuff go on in there."
Following his outrageous stunts last year, Mr O'Garro was in May handed a two-year criminal behaviour order (CBO), forbidding him from trespassing or uploading videos to social media without the permission of all those who feature in the footage.
Thames Magistrates' Court heard how the mother of a family whose home he broke into for perhaps his most infamous video believed they were put “at risk” in the May 15 stunt, and Mr O’Garro has apologised for his actions.
But within hours of being given the CBO, he flouted the ruling.
The same night, he shared a video on his Twitter account featuring him in Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, with people visible in the background, as he told the camera: “The UK law is a joke.”
At Stratford Magistrates Court in November, Judge Matthew Bone sentenced him to 18 weeks’ detention in a young offender institution and told him: “Put bluntly, your pranks are not funny.”
The judge also “strengthened” Mr O'Garro's social media ban, ruling that he could not share any videos, act with others to share videos or contribute to other people’s social media accounts for two years.
He was also ordered not to trespass on private property, or enter the E12 area of London.
He said Mr O’Garro’s actions had been motivated by a desire to “receive money and designer clothes from sponsors”, adding: "Your further offending was motivated by your desire to be famous.
“Your actions caused innocent members of the public significant harm and distress."
