The principle that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty has ancient roots. But the sisters of Nicholas Brandram say it counted for little this past June, when London’s Metropolitan Police turned up at his front door with the press in tow. The 44-year-old army veteran and HSBC director was arrested on suspicion of being the “Putney Pusher”—the jogger who, in 2017, shoved a woman into the path of a moving bus, briefly uniting a Brexit-divided nation in outrage.
The CCTV footage of the incident had caused a sensation: a woman falling into the path of the bus, its driver swerving just in time to save her life. Police questioned more than 50 men, but nobody was charged. Nine years later, officers arrived on Cranbrook Road in the leafy West London district of Chiswick, within strolling distance of High Road House, the local Soho House outpost.