Matthew Casby died after being hit by a train in September 2020, having left Priory Woodbourne Hospital in Birmingham where he was being held as a mental health patient. He jumped over a low fence in a backyard without seeing him, two days after he was admitted to hospital as an NHS patient. Matthew was taken into custody under the Mental Health Act following reports of a man running along the railroad tracks in Oxfordshire and then saying he heard voices and “received messages”. “[They] had a basic legal duty under the Mental Health Act to keep our son safe and secure. “They did not do it,” said Richard Casby, who gave information at the start of the investigation into his son’s death. “There were catastrophic consequences, for Matthew, for me, for my wife.” After an evaluation at Warneford Hospital in Oxford, doctors decided to dismember Matthew in a mental health unit for his own safety, but he was sent to a hospital almost 80 miles away in Birmingham because of a lack of beds and because he was still registered with a GP. in the city since he was a student there. Richard Caseby told jurors at Birmingham Medical Court on Monday that he ran into the city from London on the night of September 7 to look for his son after learning he had left the hospital. He said during a call to Priory Woodbourne Hospital at 6.30am. The next morning, a staff member told him: “Oh, people run away all the time, for drinks, drugs, to meet friends, it’s a common occurrence. “They usually come back after they have done what they have to do.” “The words ‘burned in my memory,’” Richard said. “And there I was thinking that my son had to be safe in a psychiatric hospital, since they had done it for his own safety. “I was definitely very wrong about that.” Richard Casby was searching for his son near his former residence on the morning of his death and was 200 meters away from Matthew when he was hit by a train just north of the University Railway Station at 8.46am. He died of a head injury caused by a large collision with a train. His father told him that during his search overnight he shot down three police cars near the hospital, but none of the officers were looking for Matthew, nor did they know he had escaped. Upon being notified by Priory Hospital, West Midlands police initially identified Matthew’s disappearance as a means to an end and upgraded her to high risk only the next morning, less than two hours before Matthew’s death. His father described Matthew as a “sensitive, kind and intelligent soul” who was a talented footballer and as a teenager had trials with Charlton Athletic FC. After graduating for the first time in history from the University of Birmingham, he began working as a personal trainer in a gym in London, while living with his parents at their home in Blackheath. He had plans to start his own fitness and training business. He started consulting in September 2019 and it was around that time that Matthew became more private and less willing to share information about his life, his father said. During the lockdown in early 2020 he moved to his parents’ holiday home in Suffolk and became more resilient to family visits. The investigation continues.
