Suicide victim’s body ended up in train cab next to the driver

The body of a City worker ended up in the cab of train next to the horrified driver after he killed himself weeks after the suicide of his girlfriend.

Anthony Phillip, 25, took his own life at Raynes Park station in Wimbledon, south west London, last July 21 after learning of the death of his long distance lover in the United States.

Mr Phillip, a qualified football coach who worked as a financial controller in the city, had online relationship with a woman at the beginning of this year.

They both suffered from depression and Westminster Coroner’s Court heard that in May the unidentified woman killed herself.

Mr Phillip was sent into a spiral of depression that resulted in him taking his own life.

He was captured on CCTV entering the station just before 6.30am and walking through a crowd of commuters towards the less crowded end of the platform.

As the train approached at 60mph Mr Phillip took a running jump on to the tracks.

Such was the force of the impact that he burst through the cab door situated on the front of the train and came to rest inside the cabin beside the traumatised train driver.

The court heard that Mr Phillip had been bullied at school and struggled to shake of the depression he developed as a result.

He was hospitalised in 2010 after a paracetamol overdose but was assessed as low risk and appeared to on the road to recovery until the shattering news of his friend’s death.

Senior coroner Fiona Wilcox said: ‘Mr Phillip was just 25 years old at the time of his death, he had a long history of depressive illness which may well have been instigated the school bullying he suffered.

‘His illness relapsed and remitted but there is no doubt that his mood lowered due to a friend of his, whom he was very close to, taking their own life.

‘I would like to pass my condolences to his friends and family as well as the driver of the train who was clearly highly traumatised.’

Mr Phillip was a qualified football coach having taken his FA coaching badges and applied for a job as a youth coach at his boyhood team Fulham FC but was unsuccessful, despite making the final four.

After seeing his GP about his low moods in May following the death of the American woman he was started on anti-depressants and was due for a mental health review but died before it could be done.

In the days leading up to the incident he had told family members he no longer needed to make decision about life and felt that he would never have a family of his own or a relationship.

His mother was the last person to see him alive and stayed up chatting and laughing with him until midnight the day before the incident.

A signed note folded up inside a book in his bedside table drawer, found in the weeks following his death, read: ‘I know I will never be happy and I am not staying here in pain any longer’.

In a letter written to the court his parents described him as a ‘very active boy who excelled at running and football’ and who ‘loved the outdoors.’

A postmortem found the cause of death to be multiple catastrophic injuries caused by the impact with the train.

Dr Wilcox recorded a narrative verdict that Mr Phillip, from Wimbledon, had taken his own life whilst suffering from depressive illness.