Man arrested in connection with bizarre trend of body-slamming attacks across London

A man has been arrested for a series of body-slamming attacks in Mile End. 

Tower Hamlets resident Samuel Flowers, 38, has been charged with four counts of common assault after the string of alleged attacks.

The Metropolitan Police is looking into other reports of body-slamming across the city after the arrest prompted Londoners to share their experiences with the strange trend.

One of the victims, Ayla Mellek, shared her experience on TikTok, describing how a “massive” man assaulted her “in broad daylight” on the canal path in Mile End.

@aylamellek

Happened at Mile End Canal, please watch out… #eastlondon #assulted #attacked #madman #fyp #crime #canal #mental

♬ original sound – Ayla

Talking to her followers, she said: “We’re walking, and he’s grunting, and I can hear his grunting as he’s getting closer to me. So I twist my body so he can get past me, because it is a bit crowded, and there was a gap for him to get past me.

“But instead of going in this gap, this guy ran at me at full force and body slammed me to the ground.

“I twisted in the air and landed face down on the floor. And then he just ran away. I was in so much shock I just started crying immediately.”

Ayla goes on to describe how a woman overheard her explaining the situation to her boyfriend, and shared that she had witnessed a similar attack in which an elderly man was body-slammed into the canal.

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Other Londoners have shared their own experiences in the comments on Ayla’s TikTok. One user shared how a man “changed his jogging route” and “swerved” to body slam her, despite her moving out of his way. Another described being body slammed so hard that she was “knocked over backwards onto concrete” outside Old Street station, injuring her head, elbow, hands and wrists and damaging a camera that was in her bag. 

Mile End Lock via Google Maps

Speaking to BBC London, Ayla shared that one user’s experience made her particularly upset.

“There was this one woman and she said she was pregnant and some guy just slammed her into the ground.

“But also it’s reading all the comments online about other women and their experiences, how it’s happened on the train, on the buses, just walking down the street in broad daylight.”

“Why should women like myself and others around London have to wait for an incident to become so severe?”

The attacks are believed by some to be part of a rising trend among the online incel community known as Butsukari Otoko, meaning “bumping man” in Japanese, in which men purposely body-slam other people in order to feel superior. The trend originated in Japan as a specific form of assault in which a man rams into a woman to knock her over while on, or waiting for, public transport.

Featured image via Google Maps/Unsplash