LU employee pushed onto tracks at Victoria

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-43727449

BBC News said:

London Underground worker 'pushed' on to tracks at Victoria

Police want to speak to this man in connection with what happened

CCTV has been issued of a man police want to trace after a London Underground worker was "pushed" on to the tracks at Victoria station.

Transport for London (TfL) described what happened as "appalling and dangerous".

The man was pushed while on a District Line platform at 10:00 BST on Tuesday 10 April.

Police said the member of staff did not suffer any injuries but was "understandably shaken".

'Very rare'
Insp Paula Jones, from British Transport Police (BTP), described what happened as "very serious" adding "urgent inquiries" were under way "to find the person responsible".

"Thankfully, incidents such as this are very rare and I am grateful the victim was not injured," she said.

A TfL spokesman added: "Everyone has the right to go about their day without fear or intimidation and we do not tolerate any form of physical or verbal assault on our staff or customers."

Mick Cash, general secretary of the Rail Maritime Transport (RMT) Union, said safety reps were "pressing for all necessary resources" to be made to protect staff.

"Staff safety must never be left to luck," he added.

Click to expand...

I think that the worker is fairly lucky to be alive.

On the district line, so luckily more room rather than a deep level tube! Hope the offender is caught!

+1 to both the above posts.

Absolutely disgraceful. These people do an excellent job to make our journeys as pleasant as possible. I really hope this person is caught, fortunately the CCTV footage looks quite good.

backontrack said:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-43727449



I think that the worker is fairly lucky to be alive.

Click to expand...

Very lucky, I hope the idiot responsible is caught. Does that platform have the 'pits' in between the rails?

It does, yes, they’re pretty wide tracks on those lines, not a typical tube. Know it well, more than likely seen the unfortunate employee on more than one occasion.

It's usually only the deep tube lines that have the suicide pits, most SSL platforms don't have them, and some googling suggests that the Victoria SSL platforms don't have them.

The track spacing is the same on all LU lines, the only difference with the SSLs compared to tubes is that usually there's the other track and a small gap between them (in which are both the outer conductor rails!). However on the SSLs the platforms are higher, as the trains have larger wheels and higher floors.

Hope the vermin who did this gets the book thrown at them in court

12CSVT said:

Hope the vermin who did this gets the book thrown at them in court

Click to expand...

Attempted murder, and no less I hope.

hexagon789 said:

Does that platform have the 'pits' in between the rails?

Click to expand...

Domh245 said:

It's usually only the deep tube lines that have the suicide pits, most SSL platforms don't have them, and some googling suggests that the Victoria SSL platforms don't have them.

Click to expand...

No sub-surface Line stations have pits.

Nick66 said:

It does, yes, they’re pretty wide tracks on those lines, not a typical tube. Know it well, more than likely seen the unfortunate employee on more than one occasion.

Click to expand...

No it doesn’t have pits, the incident occurred on the Subsurface (District & Circle) platforms and not the Tube (Victoria line) platforms.

I don't recall any SSL section that isn't just ballast?

rebmcr said:

I don't recall any SSL section that isn't just ballast?

Click to expand...

No ballast at Westminster station.

baz962 said:

Attempted murder, and no less I hope.

Click to expand...

In order for a person to be convicted of attempted murder there would need to have been an intent to kill, or at the very least knowing that death was a possibility and being reckless as to whether it was caused.
From: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/offences-against-person-incorporating-charging-standard

Attempted murder, contrary to section 1(1) Criminal Attempts Act 1981
This offence is committed when a person does an act that is more than merely preparatory to the commission of an offence of murder, and at the time the person has the intention to kill.

Unlike murder, which requires an intention to kill or cause grievous bodily harm, attempted murder requires evidence of an intention to kill alone. This makes it a difficult allegation to sustain and careful consideration must be given to whether on the facts a more appropriate charge would be one under section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. Another possible charge may one of Making Threats to Kill (see below).

The courts will pay particular attention to counts of attempted murder and justifiably will be highly critical of any such count unless there is clear evidence of an intention to kill.

Click to expand...

It might be appropriate in this situation or it might not, depending on why the perpetrator did what they did. If for example they did not intend to push them off the platform and genuinely did not consider it to be a possible outcome of their action then I don't think attempted murder would be a realistic charge.

Section 18 referred to above is:

Section 18 is:

Wounding/causing grievous bodily harm with intent, contrary to section 18 Offences Against the Person Act 1861
This offence is committed when a person unlawfully and maliciously, with intent to do some grievous bodily harm, or with intent to resist or prevent the lawful apprehension or detainer of any other person, either:

• wounds another person; or
• causes grievous bodily harm to another person.

Click to expand...

As the member of staff fortunately did not suffer serious injury, this is a very unlikely charge in this situation.
Section 34 of the Offences Against The Person Act 1861 is a possible charge:

34 Doing or omitting anything to endanger passengers by railway.

Whosoever, by any unlawful act, or by any wilful omission or neglect, shall endanger or cause to be endangered the safety of any person conveyed or being in or upon a railway, or shall aid or assist therein, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and being convicted thereof shall be liable, at the discretion of the court, to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years

Click to expand...

Chris M said:

In order for a person to be convicted of attempted murder there would need to have been an intent to kill, or at the very least knowing that death was a possibility and being reckless as to whether it was caused.

Click to expand...

To be fair I did not think they would, I wish they could. Mind you we could debate the intelligence of the offender, but I would think most people would know that if you are on the tracks, then a train could kill you.

Yes, if the intent was to put the person onto the tracks then clearly they either intended to kill or were recklessly endangering life.
If they didn't intend to put the person onto the tracks, but it was reasonably foreseeable in the circumstances that their actions might have put them there then again it's probably recklessly endangering life.
If they did not intend to put the person onto the tracks and there ending up there was not reasonably foreseeable in the circumstances then the charge is probably only going to be something related to assault.
I wasn't there and haven't watched the video so I'm not expressing an opinion which is the most likely to be the case.

In 2016 a man was jailed for 3½ years for pushing a revenue protection inspector onto the tracks at Hanwell (reports differ about whether a train was approaching). In that case their victim was injured so they were charged with both "assault occasioning actual bodily harm" (ABH) and "Endangering the safety of rail users". He was drunk at the time and "ended up smiling and chuckling" at his victim. These were likely both taken as factors aggravating the severity and thus the sentence. He pleaded guilty to both charges which will have reduced the sentence - by a third if the guilty plea was at the first opportunity (I don't know).
In the Victoria incident the lack of physical injury means that it wasn't ABH so the cases are not directly comparable.

If the perpetrator uses the tube often then they can't have failed to see warnings about the track being electrified. They know trains run on the tracks.
So that's two ways they would've known their victim could've been killed by their actions.

The person was caught by station staff at Tottenham Court Rd and arrested by police.

Mojo said:

The person was caught by station staff at Tottenham Court Rd and arrested by police.

Click to expand...

Later on Tuesday, or more recently?

The BTP have issued a press released dated Thursday morning:
http://media.btp.police.uk/r/15360/man_arrested_in_connection_to_staff_assault_-_vic

Man arrested in connection to staff assault - Victoria, London
Detectives investigating a serious incident at Victoria station in London have made an arrest.

Shortly before 10am on 10 April, a member of London Underground staff was pushed onto the District Line tracks by a man. Yesterday, officers from BTP released a CCTV image of a man they would like to speak with in connection.

A 24-year-old man from Harringay, London has now been arrested on suspicion of attempted GBH and endangering safety on the railway. He is in custody whilst enquiries continue.

The public and media are thanked for their help in sharing this appeal.

Click to expand...

Although they have not yet been charged, the crimes they have been arrested on suspicion of are interesting. To me (I am not a lawyer) it seems that the police currently believe the suspect intended to cause serious injury (the actual charge would be "Attempted wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm (GBH)", section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861) but not death. The maximum sentence for this charge is life imprisonment.

Mojo said:

The person was caught by station staff at Tottenham Court Rd and arrested by police.

Click to expand...

An most welcome development.

A man (presumably the person arrested) was charged by the Police with "assault by beating" and "endangering safety on the railway". The most recent BTP press release (quoted below) states that he was due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on Friday last week (13 April).

Man charged in connection to incident at London Victoria station
A 24-year-old man will today (13/04) appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court charged with one count of assault by beating and one count of endangering safety on the railway.

Mauro Lopes Barbosa of Conway Road, Harringay, was arrested in connection to an incident at Victoria London Underground station on Tuesday 10 April in which a member of staff was pushed onto the tracks.

The media and public are once again thanked for sharing our original appeal.

Click to expand...

An article on the "Get West London" website states that he did appear and was charged with those offences but contains no further relevant information, including whether or not he entered a plea and if so what it was. I suspect that this was written based off the BTP press release rather than court records, but can't be sure.

Assault must be tried in a magistrates court unless (a) it is charged alongside a more serious offence; or (b) it was racially aggravated (or there is a suspicion it was). In those situations, it is an either way offence. Assuming "endangering safety on the railway" is section 34 of the Offence Against The Person Act, 1861 (which it almost certainly is, given previous press releases) is a more serious offence, with a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment.
I suspect therefore that the case has been remanded for trial at a crown court on a future date - particularly as I can't imagine the RMT not commenting on a verdict, whatever it is.

Note that a person of the same name appears to have had some involvement with the Brazilian criminal justice system a few years ago. I can't read Portuguese, but it appears that person was in their early 40s at the time whereas the man charged in connection with the Victoria incident is 24, so they are almost certainly different people.

Was the defendant racially abused by the worker? Did the reverse happen?

I can find no mention in news reports of either party racially assaulting the other.

backontrack said:

Was the defendant racially abused by the worker? Did the reverse happen?

Click to expand...

Having spoken with people involved there was no form of racial abuse or protagonation involved.

Mojo said:

Having spoken with people involved there was no form of racial abuse or protagonation involved.

Click to expand...

Apologies, my mistake here. I misread @Chris M's post as saying that "there is a suspicion it was". Thanks all.

Would it not be an idea to change the law so that the deliberate pushing of any person on to an in-use railway be automatically considered attempted murder?

It'd be one less loophole for a solicitor to 'explore' and there's plenty of railway rules embedded into law so wouldn't be out of place

That would require a definition of "in-use railway".

Even assuming you mean just railway tracks it could mean, at one extreme, any tracks which have not been formally declared out of use (so would include things like the Weymouth tramway) or at the other extreme only tracks on which trains are currently running (which might exclude cases where no trains are scheduled to use a given platform for an hour). The first extreme would be too draconian in my view and the latter really wouldn't add anything to the existing attempted murder.
If you use a broader definition of railway you risk including things like pushing someone away from the tracks, or where someone is pushed in a station forecourt - which is clearly not your intent.

Under all definitions you would still need to establish that the perpetrator knew they were on or pushing somebody onto a railway that was "in use" according to the definition chosen. Depending on the definition and circumstances, that might be something reasonable to assume or it might not be. If electrified tracks formed part of your definition, you would need to establish that the perpetrator knew the tracks were electrified (and possibly also that they were live, depending how it is worded).
You would also still need to establish intent to push somebody onto the "in-use railway", which (again depending on the definition) would not always be the case. For example if the intent was clearly to push somebody along the platform parallel to the tracks that would not be prosecutable as attempted murder with a definition of "in-use railway" that specified tracks.

Finally, as I understand it, the general view of legal professionals is that the myriad railway-related offences that currently exist are too many and too specific and that it would be preferable to replace them with fewer, more general offences that are easier to communicate and easier to prosecute. For example there are several different offences related to endangering trains that differ by the specific method by which it was endangered - e.g. throwing stones or other objects at a train is a specific offence that is different to the specific offence of placing logs or similar on the rails with the intent to derail a train, whereas (iirc) if you endanger a train by hanging something from an overbridge there is no specific offence, and some cases where there is no railway-related offence at all and you would be charged with the same offence as if you'd done the same thing to a road vehicle.

With all this in mind, I think something like "assault while being reckless as to whether life was endangered" would be better. I don't know if such exists already and if not whether it has been proposed anywhere (and if so what the comments were) I've run out of time now to research that.