17 hours ago
'I was hospitalised by a flying cone under Edinburgh bridge'
He tells The Herald: "I didn't have a clue what had happened, I put my hand on the back of my head and blood was going everywhere.
'My mate heard the noise and turned round and the cone was right next to me, so someone had clearly thrown it off the George IV bridge.
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'There are loads of cones around there for the Pride parade, someone's just thrown one off and it's cracked me in the head.
'The security in Dropkicks put the gloves on and helped me out, got me some water, and then Street Assist and the police arrived and helped clean me up, the police took statements and then my sister came and picked me up and took me to the Royal Infirmary because the ambulance was going to be eight hours or something.
'I've got staples in my head and I'm getting scans because I can't really turn my head, my neck is completely jiggered.
'I can't work with it, which is kind of an issue.
"I'm going to have a five-six centimetre gash across the top of my head, a scar.
'I don't know what my neck is going to be like long-term but I can't hold my head up so I'm sitting on the couch all day with my head resting.
'The four things I do are walk the dog, go to the gym, play golf and then go to work and at the minute I can't do any of them. It's a nightmare, but it could have been a lot worse.
'I'm 6ft 1in, I'm quite big, I think if it was anyone smaller or more frail it would have been a lot worse.'
George IV bridge in Edinburgh (Image: Wikimedia) In November 2006 Australian national Andrew Smith threw a cone off the bridge which struck Irish student Kate Flannery, leaving her with a fractured skull and three broken vertebrae as well as damage to her spinal cord, which left her arms and legs paralysed for several months.
Following widespread media coverage and appeals by police, he turned himself in and was ordered to carry out community service having shown "genuine remorse".
In 2011 an appeal for witnesses was put out after a 10kg bag of sand was hurled from the bridge, and in the same year a student was fined £500 for throwing a cone off the bridge.
Mr Ward though says he has struggled to get answers from police about their investigations, with no media appeal issued and no update given to him.
He said: "I haven't heard from them.
'I've asked them twice for updates and they haven't got back in touch. I phoned them on Sunday because they wanted to know an exact time for the incident and I obviously didn't really know what was going on at the time but I went back and checked my FitBit and got the exact time of the impact from that.
'I phoned to let them know and they said the person who would be investigating it isn't on until next week. So I sent a big email in on Sunday night to ask if I could be updated by someone to know if they'd been looking at CCTV to find who did it and I've not heard anything back.
"I've spoken to two people who used to run a bar on that bridge and they've told the police that something should be done, a netting or something, because it's happening quite a lot.
'There's been a few times where people have thrown stuff but it's not actually hit anyone, but a couple of times people have been hit and it's been more severe than mine, thankfully, was.'
A Police Scotland spokesperson said: 'Around 1.40am on Saturday, 21 June, 2025, we were called to the Merchant Street area of Edinburgh following a report of a man injured from an item thrown from a bridge.
'Emergency services attended and the man was later taken to hospital.
'Enquiries are ongoing into the circumstances of this incident and anyone with information is asked to contact 101 quoting reference 0367 of 21 June, 2025.'
