N INQUEST jury has returned a verdict of suicide on a man who leapt in front of a train arriving at a Kent Railway Station.

Pearce Wright, 72, of Market Street, Deal, suffered severe head and arm injuries when he was struck by a Dover Priory-bound train at Deal at 9.45am on May 6 last year.

The inquest was told that Mr Wright, who had been undergoing treatment for cancer of the oesophagus, died from his injuries in hospital later that day.

CCTV footage showed him arriving at the station with a bicycle and then walking between Platform 1 and the waiting room before going out of view on the platform.

The train driver, the only witness, saw Mr Wright walking to the platform’s edge and immediately applied the brakes. It finally came to a stop about 25 to 30 yards along the platform.

When the emergency services arrived, Mr Wright, a freelance medical journalist, was alive and conscious underneath the train’s second carriage. Several medics who treated him that day heard him say he wished to die and refuse treatment.

Ambulance technician Amanda Smith said: “He shook his head when we tried to put a neck collar on. He said he had committed fraud and it had nothing to do with his cancer. He said he wanted to die.”

Accident and Emergency nurse Lynn Sinden said: “He said 'I didn’t fall, I jumped, please let me die’.”

Mr Wright was estranged from his wife and had been living with his partner of 31 years, Rita Marshall.

She said he was worried about an operation he was due to have, but had never indicated that he wanted to take his own life.

His son, Dr Richard Wright, who lives in Essex, said: “He was debilitated and at times felt extremely low. I realise now, that three weeks before he died when I visited, that he was making his peace.”

His GP, Dr Susan Rutherford, said it was surprising he had committed suicide while efforts were still being made to cure his disease.