A WOMAN who jumped onto railway tracks as a desperate plea for help was killed by a train travelling at 80mph.

Kaley Bethel, 29, had attempted to get out of the train’s path at Marden station and had never meant to take her own life, an inquest concluded last.

The inquest heard Miss Bethel, of The Cockpits, Marden, had suffered a "sad life". Roger Sykes, the coroner for Mid-Kent and Medway, said that as a teenager she was made the subject of a care order and went to live in a care home.

She started to drink and take drugs and had been sectioned three times, he added.

A year before her death she was left "devastated" after giving birth to a baby girl who was then forcibly taken from her through court proceedings and adopted, the inquest at County Hall, Maidstone, heard.

Her mother Eileen, also of Marden, said her daughter regularly used crack cocaine and heroin, but shortly before her death she changed for the better.

"She was trying so hard to get off the drugs and sort her life out but it hit her so hard about the baby," she said.

"That last week she was changing. She was completely different -- she was looking forward not back."

However, on the evening of Friday August 6, Miss Bethel was recorded on CCTV cameras at unmanned Marden Station.

Train driver John Wall was driving an eight-carriage train from London Charing Cross to Ramsgate, which passed through Marden at 10.57pm.

"Initially I saw something on the edge of the platform, but I thought it was a carrier bag floating," he said.

"Within a space of about two seconds I saw a person then I was past. I had enough time to see it was a female."

Mr Wall said he stopped the eight-carriage train, contacted the signaller and then inspected the train.

Although nothing was found at the front, Mr Wall said power cables between the second and third carriages were detached indicating a collision had occurred.

Investigating officer PC Calvin Kent, of the British Transport Police, showed the jury a number of CCTV stills that showed Miss Bethel appearing to consult a timetable, then suddenly jumping onto the tracks. Shortly afterwards, the film shows a train pass her as she stands on the opposite track.

"She then walks up the tracks and continually walks over the live rails," PC Kent said.

"After analysing the film many, many times it appears to me that she actually laid between the lines at one point.

"The last shot is of her on the downline. She puts her hand on the platform and uses the rail to try to get up onto the platform."

PC Kent said it was unusual the train received a side impact as most railway suicides hit the very front of the train. This could indicate, he added, that she was close to the platform at the time the train passed and may have been affected by a backdraft.

The jury heard that following Miss Bethel’s death, an undated note was found in her flat which read "Mum, I really can’t go on like this. I just want to die".

However, the family believe the behaviour was a last-ditch cry for help. They said the 29-year-old desperately wanted further treatment at Priority House, the psychiatric unit at Maidstone Hospital where she had already been treated six times before.

Mr Sykes said it was important for the jury to decide whether there had been a "lack of determination" in Miss Bethel’s behaviour that suggested she did not mean to kill herself.