Jogger is jailed after woman pushed in path of bus
LONDON — He never even stopped.
A man believed to be the jogger who shoved a woman out of his way — knocking her down and into the path of a bus, which nearly hit her — was arrested and charged with causing grievous bodily harm Thursday, London police announced.
The encounter occurred around 7:40 a.m. May 5, but it came to the attention of the public only this week, when police released surveillance video that was widely shared online.
In the video, the jogger, wearing a light gray T-shirt and blue athletic shorts, can be seen running on the sidewalk (in Britain, the pavement) westward along Putney Bridge, which crosses the River Thames in southwest London.
The jogger passes a man in a business suit, who is walking east. Moments later — and seemingly at random, out of nowhere — he abruptly and violently shoves another pedestrian, who was also walking east, into the path of an oncoming bus.
As she tumbles to the ground, the bus swerves, barely avoiding her.
According to the Metropolitan Police, the bus stopped, and several passengers came to the aid of the woman, a 33-year-old, who had minor injuries. She was en route to Putney Bridge Tube station, on the Wimbledon branch of the District line, when she was shoved.
Bizarrely, police said, the man returned to the scene.
“About 15 minutes later the jogger came back the other way across the bridge,” they said in a statement Thursday. “The victim tried to speak to him, but he did not acknowledge her and carried on jogging.”
Police received “a good response” after asking for the public’s help, officials said.
The man, 50, was arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm and was taken to a police station in south London for questioning. He has been released pending further inquiries.
The case attracted attention across Britain and on the internet. In a society fabled for its civility, with laws targeting “anti-social behavior,” the man’s actions were condemned as not only abhorrent but also aberrational.
“What we’re clearly looking at here is an individual who believes he is more important and more valuable than somebody else,” Craig Jackson, a psychology professor who studies the relationship between work and crime, told “Good Morning Britain,” a popular television program.
“He plays a game of chicken with this individual, and he’s clearly thinking, why should he move, it’s his pavement.”