A woman has been detained under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act after causing havoc on the London Underground yesterday, during rush hour.

It emerged that she had dropped her phone on the rail tracks, and when station workers were refusing to retrieve it, jumped onto the tracks in order to fetch it herself.

The incident took place at Aldgate East London at around 5:45 pm on Thursday 18 January.

The havoc caused was apparent, with one witness uploading a video of the queues on the platform at Aldgate East Station:

This video, posted on social media, shows queues of commuters calmly waiting on the sides of the platform.

Then, one of the women walks from the side of the platform, (an unauthorised area for the public), before walking back to the main platform area.

Another video, which was posted on Instagram but later deleted, showed the same woman arguing with TfL staff, then jumping onto the track and storming into the tunnel angrily.

On Twitter user reported: "I went past Aldgate East and the police were still with her. I think she dropped her phone from the bridge bit over the platforms and they were refusing to get it for her. So she was stupid and went to get it herself..."

Another bypasser tweeted:

"Basically girl 1 got seriously aggressive and violent towards girl 2, threatened to throw herself in front of a train, ran off down the tunnel and girl 2 couldn't make her [mind up] if she wanted to run away or follow her".

As a result of the incident, four of TFL's Tube was temporarily shut down.

When they re-opened commuters experienced severe delays. It affected the Metropolitan Line, Circle Line, District Line and Hammersmith and City Line.

The service was suspended temporarily while the incident was handled before the TfL lines reported severe delays.

Bystanders took to Twitter to express their resentment towards the situation. One witness wrote:

"Massive tube delays because some divvy is just running around the tracks for lolz. Cheers mate, just help up myself and probably thousands of others getting home".

Others questioned the semantics of TfL by referring to the woman as a 'passenger':

"Now Aldgate East and Aldgate is shut because of a “passenger on the tracks” not sure you can call them a passenger... great luck with public transport this week".

A British Transport Police spokesperson reported that officers had attended the scene and later detained a woman under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act. She was then taken to a place of safety.

Severe delays on the affected lines continued into the evening.
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