Victim's anger as Tube thug gets two years

Richard Lartice, 56, landed just inches from a live rail after he was tripped and pushed off the platform by Marcus Walters.

The judge who sent the yob to prison yesterday said Mr Lartice had suffered "the worst nightmare for many people who live in and travel round London".

The court heard how 22-year-old Walters had been drinking vodka with a friend on the platform at Southfields Tube station near Wimbledon and causing trouble.

He had been trying to trip up a number of people before targeting Mr Lartice and knocking him over the edge.

Mr Lartice, who was returning home from work, said: "I had seen this guy tripping people but I thought 'Why should I go around him?' I was expecting it and thought I could just step over, but he lifted his leg and as I went to fall down he just shoved me."

He was left, bleeding and bruised, between the rails and had to be helped back on to the platform to safety before the next District line train arrived.

Mr Lartice, a horticulturist, believes he could easily have been killed.

He said: "My head was near the live rail. If I had landed on it I would have been dead.

"I was bleeding, in pain and thinking about the next train coming down. It was life-threatening - I'm lucky to be alive."

Walters, from Fulham, was jailed for two years at Southwark crown court after admitting assault occasioning actual bodily harm and endangering life. Mr Lartice, who lives in Southfields, criticised the sentence, saying: "He has already served 110 days and will be out in a year. It is not enough - he should have got longer. I am just angry. I think, 'what a waste of time'."

A friend and colleague, Luke Barter, 31, added: "It is unbelievable. Pushing someone on to the train tracks is trying to kill them. There are electrical rails down there and if you hit that you are dead. Is two years enough for endangering life of a railway passenger?"

Walters was caught by CCTV and identified by witnesses following the attack in November 2005.

Judge Peter Testar told him: "This was a deliberate push, to all intents and purposes, over the edge of an Underground platform. It must have been absolutely terrifying, not only for the man to whom it happened, but also to anyone who saw it."