A 41-year-old American banker arrested on Thursday for grievous bodily harm, alleged to have shoved a woman into the path of a bus on London‘s Putney Bridge, has been released and cleared of any wrongdoing.
Metropolitan Police suspected that Eric Bellquist, an investment banker and partner in a private equity firm in London, had pushed a woman out of his way and into oncoming traffic while jogging one early morning in May this year.
Bellquist’s lawyers said he was in the States at the time of the incident:
Our client has been wrongly implicated in this matter; he categorically denies being the individual concerned and has irrefutable proof that he was in the United States at the time of the incident. Consequently, we expect a swift resolution to this wholly untrue allegation.
Today a police spokesman said that Bellquist had been eliminated from the investigation:
A man arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm after a jogger pushed a woman into the path of an oncoming bus in Putney has been released with no further action.
The 41-year-old man was arrested on Thursday, 10 August before being released under investigation. Following enquiries, he has now been eliminated from the investigation.
CCTV footage released on Monday shows the woman falling to the ground, just barely avoiding a serious injury, as a bus swerves to avoid her.
The woman, 33, sustained “minor injuries” from the attack, including bruising and back pain.
Police say the man in the video ran back across the bridge 15 minutes later, and that the victim tried to talk to him, but he did not acknowledge her.
The investigation into the incident is ongoing, with police urging anyone with info to come forward.
