Bizarre and sad story from Porn Valley: a struggling male porn actor named Stephen Hill went on a machete rampage at a video production facility in Van Nuys, California, last night. He killed one person and wounded two others.
He had been living at the studio and was apparently facing both firing and eviction. The machete was reportedly at the studio for use as a prop. LAist reports:
There is some speculation in the adult industry that Hill performs under the name “Steve Driver.” Porn actress Dana Dearmond remarked on Twitter “omg i thought of steve driver when they said it was a skinny black guy with a sword. I knew he wasn’t right in the head.”
If it really was Steve Driver, here’s another weird angle to the story: Steve Driver played “Senator Obama” in the quicky election season porn parody Palin Erection 2008, where he had a sex scene with Raquel Devine playing Sarah Palin.
Update: XBiz confirms that Stephen Hill = Steve Driver and adds, “According to reports, Driver has made threats to kill people at mass gatherings, suffers from mental illness and can get very violent.”
Update: Susannah Breslin covers the Steve Driver rampage at True/Slant with extensive background on both killer and victim (whose porn name was Tom Dong). Breslin writes:
Having written about the adult movie industry for over a decade, I have to say this story came as no surprise. While I don’t recall having ever met Hill, his type is familiar: a porn fan who became so obsessed with the industry that he managed to find a place in it, a hanger-on who never got farther up than the bottom rung, a loose cannon among loose cannons who one day went off.
Elsewhere, Boing Boing‘s rundown includes a screengrab of the victim’s Twitter feed
