LONDON – A British teenager who threw a young French boy from London’s Tate Modern gallery, causing horrific injuries, was not considered a public risk at the time, media reported today.
Jonty Bravery was jailed in June last year for attempted murder after throwing the young boy from a 10th-floor balcony of the landmark museum on August 4, 2019.
His victim, who was aged 6 and on holiday with his family, plunged head first onto a fifth-floor roof 30m below in front of stunned onlookers.
The boy, who cannot be identified because of his age, suffered a broken spine, legs and arms as well as a head injury as a result and is still undergoing intensive rehabilitation.
Bravery, who was 17 at the time, said in the immediate aftermath he had carried out the assault because he was not getting the appropriate care for mental health issues.
But despite previous violent and threatening behaviour, a serious case review into Bravery concluded there was no reason to think he would harm those around him.
“There was no recent evidence that he (Bravery) presented a risk to other children or adults unknown to him,” the report said, according to the domestic Press Association news agency.
“It was in this context that he was progressively given more freedoms, which saw him able to visit central London unaccompanied on the day of the incident,” it added.
On the day of the attack, Bravery, who was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at aged 5, had told supervisors he was travelling to visit a local shopping centre but went to the riverside gallery in central London instead.
The case review, undertaken by the London council that was responsible for his care, detailed a number of incidents up to two years before the attack.
Bravery had previously assaulted a police officer and a restaurant worker and hit a support worker with a brick as well as threatening to kill members of the public.
The case review concluded officials and carers had made “appropriate efforts” but had been obstructed by a “lack of services, placements and provisions”.
More broadly, the report said there was a lack of residential treatment for young people with high-risk behaviours like Bravery and disincentives for staff to report problems.
In December last year, judges blocked an appeal to reduce Bravery’s 15-year minimum life sentence.
In the same month, he was also given an additional 14-week sentence for attacking staff at a psychiatric hospital after he hit one nursing assistant in the face and then bit another member of staff.
A court was told before he was sentenced he had a personality disorder. Psychiatrists also said he had psychopathic traits but he had not been formally assessed for the condition. – AFP, April 27, 2021
