‘I’LL PUSH SOMEONE OFF... THEY WILL DIE’
REVEALED: Tate gallery attacker had warned carers before he shoved boy over balcony... but whistleblower claims that care bosses did nothing
THE teenager who threw a six- year- old off the top of the Tate Modern had revealed his murderous plan months earlier. Yet astonishingly Jonty Bravery, who was in council care, was still allowed to visit the gallery alone.
The Mail has obtained a shocking recording of the autistic teenager vowing to ‘push somebody off’ a tall building – almost a year before
Bravery hurled the French boy from the London landmark’s 100ft viewing balcony, nearly killing him.
Care workers – one of whom claims he alerted a senior colleague – were so alarmed by what Bravery was saying that they taped him as he calmly explained: ‘I’ve got it in my head, a way to kill somebody... and I know for a fact they’ll die from
falling from the hundred feet.’ A Mail investigation into last summer’s horrific incident at Tate Modern reveals:
Bravery said he would kill so he could go to prison and get out of council care;
At the time of the attack, he was on bail after a previous arrest on suspicion of multiple assaults;
Stockily-built Bravery’s carers were instructed to ‘never say no him’;
One of them claims: ‘This was a tragedy waiting to happen.’
On August 4 last year, Bravery horrified tourists on the Tate tower’s viewing platform by suddenly lifting up the French boy, on summer holiday with his parents, and throwing him over a chest-high barrier. The boy’s mother gave a ‘ primal scream’ as her son plunged 100ft.
The youngster was airlifted to hospital in a critical condition with fractures to his spine, legs and arms and a bleed on the brain. He remains in hospital, severely disabled.
In December, Bravery, 18, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to attempted murder.
Now, ahead of his sentencing hearing, the Mail in conjunction with BBC News has obtained a spine-chilling audio recording of Bravery outlining his plan to throw someone from a tall building.
Recorded by his carers in autumn 2018, Bravery calmly explains the plot taking shape in his disturbed mind, to go on a visit to central London ‘as if we’re having a normal day’ and ‘visit some of the landmarks’. He said: ‘It could be the Shard, it could be anything... as long as it’s a high thing. And we could go up and visit it, and then push one of... push somebody off it.’
He told his carers he was determined to kill someone because ‘I know for a fact, I’m going to go to prison, if I do that’.
Bravery, who was 17 at the time of the attempted murder, claimed being in prison would be better than being in council care.
The teenager, who has autism, an obsessive compulsive disorder, and a personality disorder, was a challenge for his family and had been moved into council care in 2017.
Hammersmith and Fulham council in London had responsibility for him, and it subcontracted the work to an experienced private care provider named Spencer and Arlington. Bravery lived in a flat provided by the council in Northolt, west London, where a team of up to six Spencer and Arlington carit
‘Push somebody off it’
ers, working in pairs, looked after him day and night.
In autumn 2018, Bravery admitted to one of his carers that he wanted to throw someone from a tall building. Concerned, the carer asked him to repeat it in front of a second carer, and that is when they recorded his confession.
Although neither of them was working with Bravery on August 4, 2019, they claimed he was allowed out that day entirely on his own to visit the Tate Modern, which has a ten-storey-high observation deck with open views over central London.
An independent serious case review has now been set up to find out exactly what went wrong.
One of the carers, who was interviewed by the Mail, says he alerted a more senior colleague to Bravery’s horrendous ‘tall building’ plot. He also claims to have played the shocking recording to someone else involved in Bravery’s care. They both deny this. Spencer and Arlington said in a statement that had ‘ no knowledge and no records’ of the claims being made.
The firm said: ‘We will continue to co- operate openly and with complete transparency with the serious case review and await its conclusions. We are confident the full facts will emerge from this process. We believe we have acted entirely properly in managing and reporting the provision of care for Jonty Bravery. However, with regards to the entirely speculative claim put to us that Jonty may have told carers of his plans, there is absolutely no evidence of this and nor is there any mention of this recorded in any care plan, case report or review from managers or from his carers, psychologists, or health workers reporting to us.’
It added it had nonetheless recognised ‘the gravity’ of the Mail’s claims and had reported them to the care watchdog and the serious case review.
Hammersmith and Fulham council said: ‘Our sympathies go out to the child and his family following what happened at Tate Modern.
‘An independent serious case review is now under way. It will look at what happened and the role played by all the different agencies involved.’