A teenager has been charged with attempted murder after a six-year-old boy was allegedly thrown from a viewing platform at the Tate Modern art gallery.
The 17-year-old is due to appear at Bromley Youth Court on Tuesday accused of trying to kill the child, who is a French national visiting London with his family.
The youngster was airlifted to hospital after he was found on a fifth-floor roof at the gallery on Sunday afternoon.
READ MORE: Teenager in custody after child, six, thrown from 10th floor at Tate Modern
He is in a stable but critical condition.
The boy had plummeted five storeys after allegedly being thrown from the 10th-floor viewing platform.
Scotland Yard has said there is no link between the suspect and the victim.
Officers were called to the gallery at around 2.40pm and the child was treated at the scene before being flown to hospital by London’s Air Ambulance.
Appealing for witnesses on Monday, DCI John Massey said: “It would have been incredibly distressing to watch, and it may be that you left Tate Modern very quickly after. If you have not yet spoken to us about what you saw, please contact us without delay.”
Olga Malehevska was on the viewing platform with her four-year-old son when the incident took place and described what happened as “absolutely terrifying”.
The Tate Modern was the UK’s most popular tourist attraction in 2018 after being visited 5.9 million times, according to the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions.
With the schools having broken up and holiday season begun, there are likely to have been thousands of visitors to the gallery on Sunday.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the incident room on 0208 721 4868, quoting CAD 4660/4August, or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article