A mystery British daredevil sparked fury around the globe earlier this week after damaging a UNESCO World Heritage Site building during a roof-top jump.
MailOnline can reveal the free runner is a 23-year-old who fractured his neck in 2019 and is part of a parkour group who travel around the world – and it’s not the first time they’ve stirred controversy.
The first videos of Devon McIntosh attempting to tackle parkour show the then 14-year-old at the East London Gymnastics Centre doing back flips on safety mats and jumping off concrete blocks to the encouragement of his young friends.
Three years later, he’d branched out from the streets of London to other UK cities like Brighton and Sheffield, trying more dangerous stunts.
And once he joined up with Team Phat, whose ages range from 21 to 27, he began travelling all over the world.
Unfortunately, these stunts angered locals abroad, with one trip to Venice last year leading to the city’s mayor harshly condemning their antics which the team claim led to them being ‘banned’.
They hit headlines again earlier this week after a viral video of Devon destroying part of a wall in the ancient city of Matera after he landed on masonry attached to the building, before crashing to the ground and grabbing his ankle in agony.
Devon, 23, is one of the members of parkour team Phat, which boasts 240,000 followers on social media, along with Luke Stones, Orlando Devaux, Abdullah West, Luke Horner, and Ale Roca.
According to his social media, he studied Animation and Gaming at Paddington Academy, a non-selective co-ed secondary school in Maida Vale, Westminster.
The young free runner began the activity from as young as 14 but in 2019 he fractured his neck.
He posted on Facebook in 2020: ‘This year meant a lot to me, only starting getting back on the jumps in January, fractured my neck in June 2019 and had a pretty long one but really had never appreciated the true importance of movement for our souls and how lost I feel without it!’
But he became injured again this week in the viral video, where he had been leaping from one roof to another, then jumping one-footed onto a narrow stretch of stonework sticking out from a wall.
He can then be seen sitting against a wall in agony and grabbing his right ankle.
The historic cliffside city in the Basilicata region has been a protected UNESCO site since 1993 and has been occupied by humans since the Paleolithic period, the early Stone Age.
It was evacuated in stages between the 1950s and 1970s for safety reasons.
The shocking images were shared online by choreographer Luca Tommassini, who said angrily: ‘It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site. How dare you?’
Mr Tommassini added: ‘Do you know where you are and what you are touching?
‘Matera should not be used as a parkour park, that stone could have been there when America was discovered or even before.’
In comments from fans of Phat, many expressed concern for the young man, pointing out he seemed to get hurt more than the others.
‘Devon is so f****g unlucky when it comes to injuries,’ one said, while another commented ‘I hope Devon is okay’.
‘I’m so glad Devon found a way to not get seriously injured, that was terrifying.’
Speaking on a podcast last year, he described himself as ‘injury-ridden’ and said he doesn’t look after himself properly and do the required rehab.
‘I don’t know if my ankle will ever fully be recovered’, he said, saying he suffered a avulsion fracture in 2022 in Capstone.
‘In the UK, the NHS is a nightmare. It’s taken me a year to get any help.’
In the video, Devon is encouraged to do the stunt due to his light weight.
Another member is heard telling him: ‘This might be one more for you. It’s stable enough – but I’m scared it could just break.
‘You’re a bit lighter than me so it might be more your challenge.’
The first time he attempts it he says ‘I’m a bit scared of that’ but completes it successfully, to the sounds of ‘yes!’ from the others before they also have a go ‘because it just looks so fun’.
‘Don’t break it!’ another called.
But when Devon tries it again, the shelf breaks off and he falls, swearing and clutching his leg in agony.
He managed to get back on his feet and is heard saying: ‘I think I completely f***d my ankle again.’
‘That was really unlucky’ another member says.
Devon then shows a friction burn on his elbow and ‘proper dent’ in his thigh as the others take turns feeling it.
‘I feel like someones taken a baseball bat to me. But I got off lucky,’ he said.
Team Phat, which is registered to members Romanian Klaus Guip and Brit Abdullah West on Companies House, began four years ago and now has a clothing line selling t-shirts for around £20.
The group of vegans and vegetarians have jumped from London’s Tower Bridge, off buildings in Canary Wharf, jumped off a crane and across rooftops in Brighton.
Speaking to the STORROR podcast last year, they described how it began as filming their training and posting on YouTube but progressed to challenging each other and doing it ‘with a twist’.
Last year, they posted a video titled ‘Defying the Mayor’s Warnings’, claiming they had been banned from Venice for their antics.
The 19-minute video in which they show all the stunts carried out in their three day trip showed them diving from the roof of a building in a Venetian canal.
When asked about the incident on the STORROR podcast, they said they’ve been back to Italy a ‘couple of times’ since.
‘Italy is so uptight – all the old people hate it but all the young people love it.’
‘Protective of old s**t.’
Free runner Ale Roca told the podcast that the first time he returned to the country he was stopped by the police but they let him go and he said he was fined ‘about a thousand’.
Another – who ‘didn’t even go into the canal’ said he was fined 700 euros for ‘obstruction of foot traffic, or people walking through Venice’.
The group said they were also fined for not wearing t-shirts.
But the free runner who actually did the stunt said he didn’t get fined as it was ‘under investigation’ but received fines for ‘everything else’.
‘They were probably hoping you broke something on the roof and they could get you for that. But we didn’t, we were super careful not the break anything because then it would get serious.’
They said that member Luke also got stopped at an airport by security due to the antics in Italy.
The video enraged locals, the mayor and even the President. Mayor Luigi Brugnaro posted on X to assure residents that the authorities were working to identify and report those responsible, telling young people not to follow the example ‘and not to compete on certain things for a few likes, you risk ruining your life’.
‘[He] should be given a certificate of STUPIDITY and a lot of kicks… we are trying to identify him, to report him, him and his partner below who made the stupid video for social media…’
He launched a city-wide search for the team, with police scouring canals in boats.
The President of the Veneto Region, Luca Zaia, also slammed the group.
He said: ‘Enough is enough, what happened in Venice is shameful, and above all it is an insult to the fragility of the city and to all of us Venetians. This must be punished firmly, anyone who wants to behave in this way should go elsewhere.’
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Emily Jane Davies
