Van hit by object thrown onto A13 near Canning Town

“Someone’s going to be killed.” Those were the words of a white van driver after he became the latest person to have an object, thought to be a brick, thrown onto his roof on the A13.

The driver, from Dagenham but who does not want to be named, was heading eastbound at around 1pm today.

As he pulled out of the tunnel just before the Canning Town flyover, he heard a bang on the roof of his van.

“Everyone’s going at 40 or 50 miles an hour coming out of the tunnel, so I pulled over at the flyover but that was another 300 yards or so down the road,” he said.

“There was a big dent in my van, just above my head.

“If I’d been going at a different speed, it could have gone through my windscreen.”

The driver, who was on his own in the van, added: “I didn’t see who it was, as I was coming out of the tunnel, but another driver said they saw two people up there.”

There have been a number of reports of items have been thrown at vehicles driving along the A13 in recent years.

In November 2012, a woman from Dagenham was driving home from her son’s football match when her car was hit by a brick near the Wennington Road turn-off in Rainham.

Earlier that year three teenagers were arrested after stones were thrown from a bridge in Aveley, Essex.

A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police said that police attended the scene of Thursday’s incident and that inquiries were continuing.