A six-year-old was thrown from the 10th floor of Tate Modern.
The Switch House at Tate Modern, the site of the incident on Sunday. Photo by Fred Romero, via Wikimedia Commons.
Tate Modern was locked down Sunday afternoon after a six-year-old boy was thrown from the 10th-floor viewing platform of the museum’s Switch House wing. The child was found on a fifth-floor terrace, treated at the scene, then taken to a hospital by helicopter. A Metropolitan Police spokesperson told the BBC on Monday that he is “no longer in a life-threatening situation.”
The 17-year-old suspect remained on the viewing platform after the incident. He was arrested by Metropolitan Police on suspicion of attempted murder. In a statement, detective chief inspector John Massey said:
This was a truly shocking incident, and people will understandably be searching for answers. At the moment, this is being treated as an isolated event with no distinct or apparent motive. There is no link between the victim and male arrested. 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.
Emergency services were called to Tate Modern around 2:40 pm on Sunday, and the museum’s doors were quickly locked to prevent visitors from leaving the premises while police and medical workers rescued the victim. After visitors were allowed to leave, the museum closed an hour earlier than usual, according to ARTnews.
On Monday, Tate Modern reopened as usual, though the viewing platform where the incident occurred remained closed. Tate Modern was the U.K.’s most-visited tourist attraction last year, according to the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, with nearly 5.9 million visitors. According to a report by LBC, with students off school for summer holidays, the museum was likely to have had thousands of visitors on site at the time of Sunday’s incident.
