Man who threw boy, 6, from Tate Modern balcony jailed for attacking Broadmoor staff
The man who threw a six-year-old boy off a balcony at the Tate Modern has been given an additional 16-week sentence for attacking two nurses at Broadmoor.
Jonty Bravery, 24, assaulted nurses Linda McKinlay and Kate Mastalerz at the high-security psychiatric hospital in Berkshire where he is being held.
They had been trying to stop Bravery, who is autistic and has to be supervised by three members of staff at all times, from climbing a ledge to throw himself from it.
Bravery was convicted in his absence last November, having declined to attend his trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. It is the second time he has been in court for attacking Broadmoor staff.
Bravery was previously handed a life sentence for hurling a French boy from Tate Modern’s 10th-storey balcony in 2019.
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The boy survived the 100ft fall but suffered life-changing injuries, including a bleed on the brain and multiple broken bones.
The judge said it is ‘very unlikely’ Bravery will be deemed safe for release at the end of his 15-year minimum term, ‘unless something significant changes’.
His trial for assaulting the nurses heard Bravery has to be monitored by three members of staff ‘24 hours a day, seven days a week’, and is kept in a room with only a mattress in it.
Of the attack, prosecutor Tom Heslop told the court: ‘At around 9.30 at night, Mr Bravery asked to go to the toilet.
‘After he used the bathroom, he attempted to climb a ledge and throw himself from it.’
The nurses tried to restrain him, putting him on his mattress before turning him on to his back, Mr Heslop said.
Bravery ‘kicked out towards Ms Mastalerz’, hitting her in the thigh and ‘clawed across’ Ms McKinlay’s face, leaving her with blood dripping down her cheek, the court heard.
Body-worn footage played to the trial showed the nurses struggling on the floor with Bravery before other staff rushed in to the room to help.
A panicked staff member can be heard shouting ‘Jesus Christ do something’.
Ms McKinlay told the court it was the first time she had been attacked at Broadmoor in her long career.
‘Jonty climbed up trying to get on to the windowsill,’ she said, adding that Bravery had done the same thing before to try and harm himself.
‘We were trying to coax Jonty down. We didn’t want him to hurt himself,” she continued.
‘He was screaming and shouting and kicking. We shouted for assistance.’
Asked about her injuries, the grandmother said: ‘He attacked my face, he was clawing at my face.
‘My eye and my face were all scratched.
‘In the aftermath I was very shaken. In all my years of being in Broadmoor I’ve never been attacked.’
Ms McKinlay was taken to hospital for treatment.
Fellow nurse Ms Mastalerz said she started ‘shouting for help’ when Bravery began kicking and scratching.
She was left with a bruised thigh, and said it had been a ‘very stressful situation’.
Finding him guilty of both charges, Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring said Bravery ‘went too far’.
In 2020, Bravery was jailed for another 14 weeks after admitting attacking Broadmoor Hospital staff.
He punched nursing assistant Sarah Edwards in the head and face before pulling her hair, and bit Maxwell King, a rehabilitation therapist assistant, on his finger after he came to his colleague’s aid.
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