‘Love Island UK’ Removes Casa Amor’s Gabriel Garland After Reported Involvement in Stabbing Incident

ITV2’s Love Island UK has removed Gabriel Garland, a contestant featured as one of the Casa Amor boys, from the dating series following reports alleging his involvement in a stabbing incident, Deadline reported on June 28.

An ITV spokesperson told Deadline in a statement that “Gabriel has now left the Villa and will not be returning.” The network did not provide additional public details about the allegations or the timing of when Garland was removed from production.

The decision ends Garland’s participation in the reality dating format after he entered the show as part of Casa Amor, a segment designed to introduce new contestants and create new pairings in the main villa. The show’s structure means contestants are typically removed or allowed to leave at specific points in the broadcast timeline, but ITV’s statement indicated the change was permanent for Garland.

Deadline’s report characterized the removal as following “reported involvement in a stabbing incident,” but it did not describe the incident, the jurisdiction, the procedural posture, or any law enforcement findings in its summary. In the absence of those specifics, ITV’s public comment was limited to the production change and the contestant’s departure from the villa.

The removal also raises questions about how reality TV productions handle serious allegations involving contestants, particularly when the claims relate to violence and public safety. While Love Island is a scripted-like format with controlled environments and staged interactions, contestants are real people who may have outside legal and safety implications that can trigger internal reviews.

For viewers, the change may affect the cast dynamics in the episodes moving forward, especially because Casa Amor is typically used to reset relationships and alter viewer expectations about who will form couples. ITV did not, in the statement cited by Deadline, indicate whether the show would adjust other planned appearances or introduce replacement contestants due to the departure.

Neither ITV nor Deadline’s cited statement provided information on whether Garland’s removal was tied to an ongoing police investigation, a court matter, or other external process. As reported, the only confirmed steps publicly described were his departure from the villa and the instruction that he would not return to Love Island UK.