The man arrested in June over the 2017 Putney Bridge push has died without ever being charged. He was the first person arrested in the ‘Putney Pusher’ case since police closed it in 2018.
Nicholas Brandram, 44, was found unresponsive at his home in Chiswick on Tuesday evening and pronounced dead at the scene. A descendant of Queen Victoria, he served as a captain in the Scots Guards in Afghanistan and later worked as a private banker at HSBC.
The Metropolitan Police said his death was being treated as unexpected but not suspicious, and that a file would be prepared for the coroner.
Brandram was arrested on 15 June on suspicion of attempted grievous bodily harm and bailed until early September. Last week the Met confirmed he had been released under investigation, which meant no conditions and no date to return to a police station.
No case against him ever reached a court. Now none can. The Met has not said publicly whether its investigation continues.
What happened on the bridge
At about 7.40am on Friday 5 May 2017, a jogger on Putney Bridge pushed a 33-year-old woman off the pavement and into the path of a number 430 bus.
The driver, Oliver Salbris, swerved and missed her head by inches. “If I hadn’t swerved, I would have smashed her head,” he said afterwards. She suffered minor injuries, and the investigating officer, Sgt Mat Knowles – who is still on Putney’s local force – said she was not hit only because of the driver’s “superb quick reactions”.
About 15 minutes later the jogger ran back across the bridge. The woman tried to speak to him, and he kept running.
The case gained enormous attention when police released CCTV footage and millions were stunned at what appeared to be extremely callous behaviour – pushing the woman out the way just because she was partly in his way when he had plenty of other space on Putney Bridge. The police investigated over 50 people and arrested three men, including the American banker Eric Bellquist, who was named around the world before he proved he had been in the US that day. Bellquist received death threats even after police cleared him. Nobody was charged, and the case was closed in 2018.
The Met did not say what prompted it to arrest Brandram in June, but officers are believed to have spoken to a former partner of his after a tip-off. In custody, he was also arrested on suspicion of possessing Class A and Class B drugs, believed to be cocaine and cannabis, and was bailed on that allegation too.
The woman who was pushed has never been publicly named. Nine years on, nobody has been charged over what happened to her.
