A PARANOID schizophrenic died after stepping out in front of a train during a week of leave from Kendray Hospital.
Krzysztof Adam Zurek, 31, was living at Harmony Housing accommodation on Stocks Lane, Barnsley, when he died on October 26 last year.
A jury, hearing details about his death at an inquest in Sheffield, returned a verdict that he had committed suicide.
Pathologist Dr Melanie Levy said the only drugs in his system were a ‘therapeutic’ amount of anti-depressant Mirtazapine. Mr Zurek had moved to Barnsley from a small village in Poland and no family were present at the inquest.
In a statement, his cousin Arkadiusz said the pair had had lost touch after school in Poland, and kept in infrequent contact through Facebook until spring 2015, when Arkadiusz was contacted by Mr Zurek’s parents who had lost contact with him.
After reporting his disappearance to the police, two or three weeks later Mr Zurek was discovered to be living homeless and had been admitted to Barnsley Hospital’s mental health unit.
When his cousin visited him, he said he was ‘unrecognisable’ and had stopped looking after himself.
After half a year in Kendray Hospital, Mr Zurek was discharged, but was soon in the care of Kendray a second time and his father Josef moved from Poland to Barnsley to be nearer his son.
Train driver Paul Webster said the train had been moving at 60mph and was just 40 yards away from the junction when he spotted the figure of a white man wearing a cap stood at the crossing.
He said the incident happened within ‘a matter of seconds’.
British Transport Police officer Roy Percival confirmed there were no other witnesses or suspicious circumstances and believed Mr Zurek’s actions to be deliberate.
Consultant psychiatrist at Kendray Hospital Dr Piyush Prashar treated Mr Zurek who was admitted under the Mental Health Act in January 2015 and diagnosed with severe depression with psychotic symptoms.
After being discharged in May, he lost contact with the early intervention team and stopped picking up his prescriptions. On April 3 last year, he was re-admitted to Kendray again after the police apprehended him in Barnsley town centre following an incident when he had approached two women and shook them by the shoulders, shouting at them.
He admitted to Dr Prashar that he had previously tried to commit suicide. As his treatment continued and his condition improved, he was gradually allowed out of the hospital on extended periods of escorted and unescorted leave.
Dr Prashar said: “The key issues early on were around how he felt guilty about requiring help from services, about leaving university and feeling the need to pay back debts to a previous landlord and the bank and he felt the need to procure a job as soon as possible.”
By October he was being considered for discharge and procedures were being put in place to ensure he would not disengage from his treatment again.
He was three days into a seven nights’ overnight leave when he died.
Mr Prashar said: “I was shocked to hear he had died. I didn’t believe it and waited for the BTP to confirm it was him.”
