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Police name man who crashed onto bus roof in City restaurant death plunge
Last updated at 11:17am on 31.05.07A man who plunged to his death onto the top of a bus today from the roof garden of a City restaurant has today been named.
City worker Richard Ford, 33, from Leytonstone, is believed to have taken the lift to the garden surrounding the Conran restaurant at 11.40am yesterday. He fell to his death shortly afterwards - onto the roof of the number 73 bus on Queen Victoria Street.
Passers-by watched in horror as the man fell six storeys from the restaurant in the Square Mile.
Mr Ford, dressed in a suit and tie, is believed to have died instantly.
Paramedics who arrived at the scene used ladders to climb onto the bus roof to reach the man.
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Six-storey fall: paramedics with the body of the dead man on top of the No 76 bus in Queen Victoria Street today. Shocked witnesses said he hit the double-decker's roof head first
Witness Shaun Carbin, 25, a road maintenance worker, said: "I turned around and saw him falling through the air coming down on his side. He hit the roof of the bus and it made a sickening thud. He hit it head first.
"Everyone was just in shock - no one was screaming, they were just standing there and watching. The guy was dressed in a suit, shirt and tie and looked like a City type.
"The paramedics went up there but there was nothing they could do for him and the firefighters brought him down on a stretcher and he was put in the back of a van."
Traffic was halted and the street closed by officers from the City of London police. A spokeswoman said officers were investigating whether the man fell or jumped from the rooftop of the former Mappin & Webb building.
She added that there did not appear to be any suspicious circumstances.
An ambulance service spokeswoman said: "The ambulance service was called at 11.37am and our crews arrived to find that the man had sadly died."
One theory is the man jumped from a walkway which extends from the apex of the restaurant's rooftop garden over Queen Victoria Street and the Poultry.
The manager of the French restaurant popular with City financiers refused to comment.
When it opened in 1998 the restaurant's views were described as being among the most spectacular in London.
One critic described the "precipitous drop" into the six-storey central well and the walkway extending beyond the building's edge that gave the feeling of "walking the plank".
The Conran restaurant chain - established by Sir Terence Conran - changed hands earlier this year after a management buy-out. The restaurant is now run by D&D London. However, Sir Terence kept a 51 per cent stake in the company.
