Child thrown from 10th floor at Tate Modern

[ineedaholidaynow]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-47214207

Who would do something like this? Scary.

Nextphone - you are right. I suppose I am just thinking of precautions like not standing close to edge of platform, or parapets/sills....

I have a 7 year old and I just can’t imagine the horror of this for that poor family. Utterly horrific.

I couldn't understand this when I saw it earlier. How is it even possible to get so close to being pushed or thrown? No barriers or security?

Dreadful.

Having been to tate modern im not surprised. Terrible building design. Hope the boy ok. How his family must been feeling...cant image it x

It's terrifying, this, the incidents in America and Germany, l feel melodramatic but what the fuck is going on!

My friend and her DS were there..they were all locked in and not told what had happened.

She only found out when they were eventually released.

She is in shock

This is horrendous

How could a teenager do that?

I so hope the boy survives,

Someone I was at university with was a victim of a similar attack to this when he was a child.

Basically he was walking along a road and a man was cutting his hedge was a chainsaw and he attacked my friend with the chainsaw. My friend has no memory of the event but according to witnesses he didn’t interact with the man at all before the attack. (Not that being called “stinky poo bottom” makes it acceptable to attack them with a chainsaw but there was nothing like that.) He was a complete stranger. He was an ordinary, happily married family man with a children of his own. He was very remorseful afterwards.

There was never any real explanation to it except that it was thought that something “broke” in the man’s head at just the wrong moment.

My friend was ok although spent a long time in hospital, needed several surgeries and had some scars.

Sometimes there is no explanation for these things.

I did once see a labourer fall from around 100 feet high on a building site, what saved him tho he was badley injured, was a small sandpile that absorbed some of the inpact, this young lad may hopefully have hit something that had absorbed some of the energy before he hit the roof lets hope so if he survives the first 24 hours he may well puil through but the poor parents :(

I too years ago loved standing by tube platormes watching that trains but these days if theres a seat i'll be there till the train stops and I don;'t scare easily but these days there seems to be a new breed of manic out and about:(

Still at least we don't have the same level of Gun ownership as the USofA not a good weekend over there was it:(

Terrifying prospect to happen on a day out. I hope the wee boy survives and that the perpetrator gets help because there has got to be some serious mental illness there. It's easy to fall into fury at something like this but no sane person does this. Two victims to mental illness, sadly.

Bloody senseless.

It's such a horrific thing to happen, it's hard to imagine why unless the 17 year old has some mental health issues

I hope the boy pulls through, didn't the boy who feel from the theme park ride survive after it was reported that he was very badly injured?

Who the fuck would do that??

It makes me go cold.
No point guessing why it happened at the moment.

There was a very similar case recently in the US where a young boy was thrown off a balcony at a mall by a young man. Hard to get your head around.

Bloody nutcase. No sane person would throw a person off a building.

Prayers (of any and all kinds) for this child and his family, that he's somehow light enough to survive this.

Someone I'm fond of, survived against all odds, being pushed under a tube by a random stranger.
Sometimes just sometimes in the midst of the impossible the improbable can happen...

DAvetheCat, I was there earlier, but had, thank god, already left well before this awful incident.

Someone upthread asked how it could happen, the viewing gallery where I assume they were is open, there is a wall about five foot tall but no other barrier. I imagine they will review things now.

Just awful - I can't imagine what that poor mother must be going through. The 17-year-old's family must be going through hell as well.

we were in London yesterday and I was horribly anxious on the Tube platforms thinking about the mother and child pushed onto the tracks in Berlin. I kept nagging DS to stand further back, but DH (who lived in London for years) thought I was being ridiculous. Then this.... :(

@spiderlight - I am glad I am not the only one...

I can’t imagine that a sane person would ever do this. Assuming it wasn’t an accident and has been misreported, then the 17yr old must have serious mental health problems. Cuts to mental health services and poorly run services impact everyone not just the unwell person.

Something similar happened in Australia a few years ago

Apparently on the TV earlier a mother was saying that she'd noticed the teenager following her and her child earlier in the afternoon. Chilling.

Oh my goodness, I walked right past there twice today (not at the time when any of this was going on - before and after). How awful to think that something so dreadful was going on just close by. Poor mother.

I have no idea what happened in this scenario and would reserve judgement.

Just popping on wrt the 'care in the community' comments...

I worked for a learning disability charity with a lovely ethos, all around person centred care and the basis of it was teaching teeangers with leaning disabilities life skills in the community.

Which was largely commendable and fine. However, one client would become triggered very easily in public and with no prior warning would lash out hitting whoever was near, hurling glass objects onto the floor in supermarkets whilst being accompanied by 21 year old graduates who had to contain this behaviour.

The focus was always on the 'learner' being empowered and for e.g. they would have to carry their own backpack around. Which was fine for most people on the programme but this particular client would remove it and try to throw it down off bridges into the path of oncoming traffic on A roads far below.

It was an accident waiting to happen, management didn't care about anything other than keeping the 'learning' going.

I am not in any way suggesting that the perpetrator of this incident had a learning disability, more trying to frame the fact that when we assume agencies can balance the needs of clients with learning or MH disabilities and the community at large often that simply isn't true. There is too much tension between the two camps and a focus on achieving 'set goals' often puts the public at risk.