The 10th-floor viewing gallery at London‘s Tate Modern delivers a panoramic view of the city’s sights. The Thames stretches out below and the iconic dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral is directly over the river. It’s the kind of place you let your guard down and take in the sights, particularly if you’re a tourist enjoying the city for the first time.
But on Aug 4, 2019, this place became a nightmare. A French family was taking it all in when, in the blink of an eye, 17-year-old Jonty Bravery snatched their six-year-old son and hurled him off the balcony. The kid fell 100 ft and smashed into a lower patio area.
Paramedics rushed to the scene, though everyone present assumed they’d just witnessed the brutal death of a child. After all, the sickening thud he made when he hit the ground indicated the worst. Yet, miraculously, the child was still alive. Barely.
He suffered a traumatic brain injury, multiple spinal fractures, broken bones across his body, and shattered his arms and legs. Doctors described the boy’s injuries as “permanent and life-changing”, underlining that he may never be able to walk again.
We now have an update from the parents on his progress. It’s now six years on from the incident, and the boy is now 12. His parents call him “notre petit chevalier” (“our little knight”) and he’s defying doctors’ predictions. As his parents explain:
“Our little knight had long set himself the goal of being able to run, jump, and swim again. He can’t do it like other children his age, of course, but we can no longer describe what he does in any other way than by saying it’s running, jumping, and swimming.”
Earlier this year, he set himself the goal of completing a one-and-a-half-mile tricycle ride to the beach and back with his Dad, which he achieved.
Throw away the key
For Bravery, the story is less uplifting. He was diagnosed with autism at age 5 and suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, was convicted of attempted murder, and sentenced to 15 years behind bars.
In a disturbing twist, it was revealed he’d had a long history of violence, including attacks on children, beating a carer with a brick, dragging a care worker by her hair, three assaults on police, attacking a restaurant waiter, and racially abusing his care worker. He also told mental health professionals he was planning to kill his family, though they didn’t take him seriously.
Not only that, he specifically told professionals he was planning to visit a London landmark and “push somebody off it”:
From 2020.https://t.co/VT5k7MznOg pic.twitter.com/Iwl52X1wf6
— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) October 27, 2025
As the review explained:
“[His} actions were viewed as products of his autistic behaviour and there was no consideration of these threats in a context of conduct disorder.”
Bravery was placed in the notorious high-security psychiatric facility Broadmoor Hospital after his arrest, where he repeatedly assaulted staff. He was then sent to the high-security prison Belmarsh, where he was soon arrested for raping a fellow inmate. The judge said he had “little prospect of rehabilitation,” and experts describe him as a “grave and immediate risk.”
We only wish they’d come to that conclusion before he threw some innocent kid off a balcony.
