THE CAMERA WAS ROLLING, AND Arnold Schwarzenegger was off on a rip-roaring car chase. But this was no action movie. Two photographers—one with a video camera—were pursuing him; his pregnant wife, Maria Shriver; and Patrick, their 3-year-old son, last May. Just a week out of the hospital after open-heart surgery, "I felt very vulnerable and very shaky," the Terminator told a Santa Monica superior court on Jan. 30.
Today the paparazzi, Giles Harrison, 29, and Andrew O'Brien, 31, may be feeling vulnerable and shaky themselves. On Feb. 2 the judge convicted them of false imprisonment; they face up to two years in prison.
Shriver, 42, who last spring was almost five months pregnant with their fourth child (Christopher, born Sept. 27), was at the wheel of the couple's silver Mercedes-Benz on May 1 as they drove Patrick to his preschool. Chased in two vehicles by the photographers—Britons working for Splash, a news agency—Shriver testified that the Chevrolet Blazer driven by Harrison, who was also convicted of reckless driving, bumped her car when she stopped at an intersection. "I was terrified," she said, "that he was either going to steal my child or open the door and my husband would try to hit him and have a heart attack." Outside the school, O'Brien, who allegedly got into a shoving match with the school principal and a Federal Express deliveryman who tried to intervene, blocked the Mercedes—that's called false imprisonment—and leaned over its hood to take more pictures. "My heart was pounding like crazy," Schwarzenegger, 50, testified. "I was just trying to tell myself, 'Calm down, Arnold.' "
Judge Robert Altman delayed sentencing for three weeks. Whatever the ruling, the pair are probably getting off easy. Asked in court why he hadn't taken matters into his own bone-crushing hands, Schwarzenegger, who was under doctor's orders not to get excited, replied: "My reaction would have been quite different without the surgery, and neither of these two gentlemen would be sitting here today."
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