A 44-year-old millionaire banker and former British Army officer has been arrested on suspicion of pushing a woman into the path of a bus on Putney Bridge in 2017 – a case that had remained unsolved for nearly a decade.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed the man is in custody on suspicion of attempted grievous bodily harm after the incident on 5 May 2017, when a jogger appeared to shove a 33-year-old woman into the road as a double-decker bus bore down on her. The driver, Oliver Salbris, swerved at the last moment, avoiding what he later described as a near-certain death. “If I hadn’t swerved, I would have smashed her head. It was reflex. The consequences would have been terrible for her – and for me,” he told the Sunday Times at the time.
“Nine years after a woman was shoved in front of a bus, police arrest a 44-year-old banker on suspicion of attempted grievous bodily harm.”
The suspect, who reportedly has ties to several European royal families and works as a director at a private bank, was arrested after the Metropolitan Police reopened the case. The force had originally closed its investigation in 2018, after three men were arrested and released without charge, and detectives had identified more than 50 people of interest. All lines of inquiry were said to have been exhausted.
CCTV footage from the bridge showed the jogger running along the pavement and appearing to push the woman into the path of the bus, which swerved into the adjacent lane to avoid her. Sergeant Mat Knowles praised the driver’s reaction: “It was only due to the superb quick reactions of the bus driver that she was not hit by the vehicle.”
Around 15 minutes after the push, the jogger returned across the bridge and ignored the victim when she tried to speak to him, before disappearing from the scene. The case, dubbed the “Putney Pusher”, became the subject of a play, “Once Upon a Bridge”, performed at the OSO Arts Centre in Barnes, which sparked renewed conversation around the attack.
The Metropolitan Police said: “The arrest relates to an incident on 5 May 2017, where a woman was pushed into the path of a bus on Putney Bridge in Putney.” The suspect remains in custody. Nine years after the shove that could have been fatal, the question of why the jogger pushed a stranger into traffic remains unanswered.