A video was released by British police showing a jogger on a pedestrian walkway roughly pushing a woman such that she fell into the path of an oncoming bus. It was only the quick thinking of the bus driver who swerved that prevented a tragic death.
What has enraged people is that the push seemed entirely unprovoked and the jogger did not even pause in his running. To add to the injury, “Fifteen minutes after the incident, which occurred around 7:40 AM, the woman saw her aggressor jogging back over the bridge and tried to engage him, but police said he “did not acknowledge her and carried on jogging.””
The police released the video to try and identify the jogger but what is puzzling is that they released the video just now when the incident took place back in May. But despite that time lapse they seem to think that they have identified the person and he has been arrested and charged and released on bail but not yet publicly identified. However reports have suggested that it was an American partner in a private equity firm though he has denied it, saying he was in the US at that time.
What has caused outrage is that the jogger had plenty of space to go by the woman because the path is 8 to 10 feet wide and indeed she had moved to the side of the path as he approached. What made him do such a thing? And why would he not even stop? Some are labeling it ‘jogger rage’ and as one might expect, the internet has had a wide range of responses.
Since releasing the video on Tuesday, police have received a slew of reports across the country of similarly aggressive incidents between runners–though none as life-threatening as the one on Putney Bridge.
The Telegraph ran an article by a runner who said he was “shocked by not surprised” when he saw the video, and that he’d “lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen moments of jogger rage: aggressive runners barking at pedestrians, shaking their fists at drivers (or banging them on car bonnets), or angrily elbowing slower trotters out of the way at a ‘fun run’.”
On Twitter, many scoffed at the “jogger rage” conceit. One woman tweeted a link to the news with the hashtag #probablyprivileged, referring to the shover. Another tweeted that “jogger rage” was a silly excuse for “a white male attempting to assault/murder an innocent woman.”
Some idiots have gone to great lengths to blame the victim, arguing that the woman attempted to trip the jogger, leaving him with no choice but to shove her into the street in self-defense.
The simple answer may be that the jogger is a jerk.
That looks like attempted murder.
Jogger rage. Prof Craig Jackson’s evaluation sounds reasonable to me just by the way the man shoved the woman. The body language says, “I’m important, how dare you even think of getting in my way”.
Alternatively, we have a very mentally disturbed person in a rage from something else and lashing out at anyone handy. But in either case, it’s rage not just being jerk.
A jerk might have shoved her, even shoved her hard, but there was anger in that attack.
I was at a similar incident this afternoon. My city has bike stands dotted around the centre of town that look like an inverted U. One can lock two bikes to them.
I was waiting for a bus at the downtown transfer point when I heard someone behind me say something like “What are you doing with that bike?” I turned around and a bike was completely upside down at one of the stands.
A man had just picked it up and turned it upside down, presumably with violence. I was told that a man who had been arguing loudly with his wife, had, when she had walked into the hospital across the street, come stalking along and just grabbed the bike, upended it and continued on.
Of course to crown things, a friend came around the corner looking wide-eyed at her upside-down bike. We got the bike upright, no harm done to the bike but she was a bit shaken.
@ 1 chigau
Yes, IANAL but either manslaughter or second degree murder.
Whoever that man is, he is bloody dangerous.
Probably just your standard woman hater, thinking how dare she intrude in his important life.
@ 4 Lofty
No, this is “I am entitled” out of my way you peasant. He probably would not have done it to a male but this is a real entitlement type. The “out of MY way little person” type. Someone like the Orange One if he could run.
Unless someone just mentally disturbed and ready to lash out at anyone but I doubt it as he was a jogger.
Notice that he completely ignored the man walking by ahead of the woman. Meaning, I second Lofty’s #4.
There’s no such thing as “second degree murder” in British law. In any case, the victim was, fortunately, only slightly hurt -- no thanks to the attacker, obviously. The man arrested was released without charge, and police enquiries continue.
As with cyclists, the act of a single individual is ascribed to the entirety who will all be blamed for it. And while the man’s actions certainly are criminal (at the very least, it’s assault), is there proof he was trying to kill her, or just arrogantly pushing her out of his path? There’s not enough to be certain either way.
“Jogger rage” is a farcical term, like “distracted walking”.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hawaii-texting-ban-idUSKBN1AD2LS
# 8 Intransitive
I don’t think he was trying to kill her, he, probably, was too angry to think about consequences of knocking someone into a bus lane.
# 6 Holmes
I still don’t agree with Lofty. I am more than happy to ascribe rampant sexism but I think he despises just about everyone just women more.
Maybe it was “affluenza”?
Regarding the delay in releasing the video it’s possible tht the Met simply don’t have enough officers and they have only just got to this. Nasty as it is it isn’t as serious as the stabbings and acid attacks that there have been recently, plus they may well still be overloaded from the investigations around the terrorist incidents. Manchester Police have admitted that they are behind on routine investigations to the extent that they have decided to blitz them with staff temporarily seconded from various specialised units.and attributed at least part of the backlog to the extra work caused by the Manchester arena bombing. thanks Teresa May -- it was when she was Home Secretary that the worst of the police cuts were implemented and she didn’t object.
@Jazzlet #12 – it’s not a case that the Met Police has only just got round to it. Police enquiries had been going on for some time and, having drawn a blank, the Police went to social media. It’s fairly uncommon for UK police to do this.
On the rest of the story, that video seems (to me) to show the jogger actually going closer to the woman who is at the same time moving away, arms outstretched ready for a shove. So from this video alone I’d be surprised if it were not somehow deliberate or an attempt to engineer a collision that would require him to shove her out of the way. That would, in UK law, have put a hypothetical lethal outcome firmly into the manslaughter territory because death would not be directly intended, but death is a foreseeable outcome. IANAL but I seriously doubt that one could make a case for attempted manslaughter because attempted manslaughter seems indistinguishable from attempted murder. However a case for “GBH” (grievous bodily harm in UK law) seems fairly open-and-shut to my non-legal brain.
Also worth noting – the person arrested has been released without charge. His lawyers claim to have irrefutable proof that he was in the USA at the time. He had been dobbed in to the police almost immediately that the media published the story and the police had been confident enough to make an immediate arrest: curious story all round.