6-year-old boy thrown from 10th floor of art gallery by teen stranger, boy critical but stable
Visitors at the Tate Modern in London on August 4 were left horrified after a six-year-old boy was allegedly pushed off the tenth-floor balcony by a teenager.
Police and ambulance crews rushed to the scene and transported the young boy to a hospital, reported the Daily Mail. He had fallen from an exterior viewing platform on the 10th floor of the Blavatnik Building and was found on a fifth-floor roof.
Nancy Barnfield, 47, of Rochdale, was on the 10th-floor viewing gallery — which provides a 360-degree view of the London skyline — with a friend and their children when the incident unfolded.
She said her friend heard a "loud bang" and that, when she turned around, saw a woman screaming, "Where's my son?! Where's my son?!"
"We did not notice the mum before, we noticed her after because she was hysterical by then," she said. Another eyewitness who was on the fifth floor of the member's lounge similarly told the Mirror, "I heard the impact and then screaming from above as a woman screamed 'He's my son! He's my son!"
"I went inside because the screaming was horrific, the boy didn't make any noise but the people from the viewing platform were screaming."
A third witness also posted online that they had heard "lots of screaming and shouting" from a woman for around 10 minutes preceding the arrival of emergency services.
Speaking about the incident, a London ambulance spokesperson said, "We were called at 2.40 p.m. on August 4 to reports of an incident at the Tate Modern."
"We sent two ambulance crews, an incident response officer, a medic in a response car and an advanced paramedic to the scene. We also dispatched London's Air Ambulance and our Hazardous Area Response Team (HART). We treated a person at the scene and took them to hospital as a priority."
A spokesman for the Tate Modern confirmed that authorities had initiated a lockdown on the gallery after the horrific incident and that all points of entry and exit were closed.
The gallery did open on June 5, but it was announced that the viewing platform would remain closed for the day. Barnfield said members of the public quickly surrounded a man who was near to the hysterical mom after the fall and restrained him. She said he "just stood there and was quite calm."
Police said they arrested a 17-year-old boy on suspicion of attempted murder in connection to the incident and said there was nothing to suggest he knew the six-year-old. The victim is reportedly in a "critical but stable condition."