The family of Nicholas Brandram, the man suspected of being the so-called “Putney pusher”, have accused Scotland Yard of lying about the case and trying to “rewrite history” after his death. Last week, police and paramedics were called to an address in Chiswick, London, where Brandram was found dead.
He had been arrested in June on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm by pushing a woman into the path of a bus in 2017. He “took his own life after months of immense pressure” caused by the Metropolitan Police investigation, said relatives.
What happened on Putney Bridge?
At around 7.40am on 5 May 2017, a man jogging along the pavement on Putney Bridge in southwest London appeared to veer towards a woman coming in the opposite direction and push her head first onto the road, directly into the path of an oncoming bus. The bus driver, Olivier Salbris, managed to swerve around her just in time. If I hadn’t, I “would have smashed her head,” he told The Times. About 15 minutes later, according to the police, the jogger came back the other way across the bridge. The woman, who had sustained minor injuries in her fall, tried to speak to him, but he ignored her.
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Three months later, the police released dramatic CCTV footage of the incident, generating headlines around the world.
What happened with the investigation?
In the months that followed, detectives interviewed 50 men and arrested three suspects. All three were released without charge, however, and the Met closed its investigation in 2018.
The unsolved case continued to loom large in the popular imagination. In 2021, Sonya Kelly wrote “Once Upon a Bridge”, a 90‑minute play inspired by the incident, in which the jogger was depicted as a financial analyst. Police said they hoped the play might encourage people with information to come forward.
Earlier this year, nine years after the attack, detectives arrested Brandram. It is understood that Brandram told friends that “a relative of his ex-wife had gone to the Met”, following “an acrimonious divorce” and custody battle, said The Times. Officers searching his west London home after his arrest found small quantities of Class A and Class B drugs, which he was additionally arrested on suspicion of possessing.
Who was Nicholas Brandam?
At the time of his arrest, 44-year-old Brandram was a senior manager for HSBC’s private banking service, a role from which he was then suspended. Before entering a career in finance, he had spent eight years in the British Army, and was a decorated captain, who had served in Iraq, Bosnia and Afghanistan. It has been widely reported that he was the grandson of Princess Katherine of Greece, and the godson of the late Prince Phillip.
In 2013, Brandram had pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention after knocking over a female cyclist on Hyde Park Corner when he was riding a Harley-Davidson. He had driven off without leaving his details or checking whether she was injured; he told the court he didn’t know he had hit her.
After his arrest this summer, Brandram was initially released on bail. But, earlier this month, the Met announced that he had been released under investigation without any conditions, “suggesting that the case was not progressing with any urgency”, said The Telegraph. He was never charged or tried.
What do his family say?
Brandram’s family insist he was not the Putney pusher, and say the Met Police’s failure to clear his name was “a source of profound grief and anger for our family”. “There was no forensic evidence linking Nick” to the crime, “no evidence placing him on Putney Bridge at that time, and no credible evidence that he was the man shown in the footage. In fact, the evidence proved the opposite,” they said in a statement.
His sisters told The Times that he had a tattoo on his forearm and a withered calf, “neither of which were visible on video or images issued by police”. They also claim there is evidence showing he sent an email from his office in Bond Street at around the time of the incident.
Relatives said that a Met Police detective recently told Brandram’s legal team that there was only one “final” avenue left to be resolved. Brandram’s sisters and mother believe this was the outcome of a DNA test, which they insist would have definitively cleared his name.
A spokesperson for the Independent Office for Police Conduct confirmed that it had received “a mandatory referral” from the Met Police after Brandram’s death. The Met say the investigation into the Putney pusher is still ongoing.
