Mental health professionals will assess the 17-year-old charged with the attempted murder of a six-year-old boy who was allegedly thrown from the viewing balcony at Tate Modern last weekend. Experts will evaluate the British teenager’s mental state ahead of his next court appearance, which is set for November.
The teenager appeared at London’s Old Bailey court for a preliminary hearing on Thursday, August 8. There, the legal team for the accused said they will obtain psychiatric reports before he is asked to answer the charge of attempted murder with a plea, the Telegraph reports.
The victim, who was a French boy visiting the UK on holiday with his family, sustained multiple fractures to his spine, legs, and arms, as well as a bleed to the brain after falling 100 feet from the 10th-floor viewing platform onto the gallery’s fifth-floor roof. He was airlifted to the hospital while visitors were held inside the art museum during the incident on Sunday, August 4. The most recent update on the boy’s status, which was given earlier this week, was that he is in “critical but stable” condition.
A sympathetic stranger who is a nurse in London set up a fundraising campaign for the boy and his family on Tuesday. It has so far raised nearly $25,000. Vicky Diplacto explains that she established the GoFundMe so that the young boy “may receive gold-standard care and support.” She said that the money will also help his family to receive “the ongoing care and support that they may need—when they need it.” Diplacto said she empathizes with the French family as her own brother was left paralyzed after an accident abroad. European Union nationals who are injured in an accident in the UK, or whose health problem is “unplanned,” are treated for free by the National Health Service, although that could change after Brexit.
The court has imposed a reporting restriction to preserve both the suspect’s and the victim’s anonymity. A plea hearing for the teenager is slated for November 7, followed by what is expected to be a two-week trial beginning February 3, 2020. In the meantime, the accused has been remanded to a youth detention center.
The Tate Modern’s 10th-floor viewing platform is closed until further notice, according to the Tate website. It has been shut “out of respect” to the victim and his family since the incident.