Age: 49
Sex: female
Date: 27 Mar 1999
Place: Knightsbridge, West London
Maria Wodianitzky died after she was dragged off a bus in a mugging.
She was from Stockholm in Sweden and had been in London for two hours when she was attacked.
She was taken to King's College hospital after the incident where she was put on a life support machine after it was found that she was in a coma, however, it was later switched off.
She had been on a bus travelling through Knightsbridge in west London at the time when a man grabbed her handbag. However, she had had the strap of her handbag around her body and the man had dragged her along the length of the bus and then jumped off it pulling her off too. The bus had been going at about 20mph at the time and she had hit her head on the kerb in the process causing head injuries.
The man then fled without the handbag.
A person chased the man, but he got away. He was described as a light-skinned black male, about 6ft tall, of slim build and aged between 20 and 35.
It was said that the man had then been picked up by a taxi-driver that the police said had unknowingly picked him up and said that they wanted to trace the taxi-driver. They also said that they wanted to trace two men who had told the person that had chase the mugger that he had got into the taxi.
Maria Wodianitzky had been travelling with her ex-husband and her 14-year-old son at the time and would have been staying at a holiday flat in Kensington for the week.
