She urges anyone who experiences anything similar to report it
Beverley Thomas was attacked on the London 345 bus(Image: Beverley Thomas)
A middle-aged woman says she was left in ‘excruciating’ pain after a random man on a bus allegedly booted her in the leg. Beverley Thomas, 58, was on her way back to her Stockwell home from charity work in Brixton last Monday (July 6) on the 345 route.
Beverley said working at the food hub, run by Pastor Lorraine Burrell Jones OBE, ‘means everything’ to her and helped get her through dark times when her mum died last year.
She says that she was trying to get off the bus at around 3pm, but waited for another woman to get off first. She says that a tall man got up and thought that she should wait for him to get off too.
But he ‘stopped at the two seats that you have at the front before you get off.’
After politely saying ‘excuse me’ three times Beverley says she tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. But having ignored her again, Beverley decided to manouvere around the man calmly so she could get off.
The impact of the ‘excruciating’ kick left a mark on Beverley’s leg(Image: Beverley Thomas)
Out of nowhere, she says, she ‘felt this excruciating kick to my leg.’ Shocked, she looked back to see the man giving her a look ‘as if to say he’s kicked me.’
The mother-of-one doesn’t do confrontations, so she took out her phone to get a picture of the man so she could report it to the police. Beverley described him as a Black, 6ft 4 man, with a shaved head and a ‘couple of scabs on his face.’
She added that her fellow passengers were equally as ‘shocked.’ “People in society today, they don’t want to get too involved. One or two people asked me if I was okay, I hope the bus driver reported it,” she said.
But being a stoic woman committed to helping others, Beverley went back to the food hub the next day with her throbbing leg which hadn’t stopped hurting until yesterday (Friday, July 10).
‘He didn’t look the full ticket’
Beverley said her friends and family were so raging at the news of her alleged attack that they wanted to ‘go looking for him.’ However Beverley is now at a place in her life where she doesn’t want problems.
But she did conceded that her younger self would’ve ended up trading blows with her attacker. Having four brothers helped this, as they ‘taught her how to box’. “Back in the day I would have been rolling around with him,” she said.
She added: “I find it bizarre that a a black man could see another black woman and just want to do that. To be honest, he didn’t look the full ticket.”
‘Women are not safe’
Beverley has a clear message for those who’ve experienced what she has: get in touch with the police.
“Women are not safe, this type of behaviour needs to be stopped,” she added.
“You’re on public transport trying to get home from doing something beautiful for the community and this is what I have to experience. I still can’t believe it’s happened. But if it does happen to anybody else, please report this in the first instance to the police. We’ve got to make a stand.”
The Met Police confirmed it received Beverley’s report.
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