Woman jumped to death from shopping centre (From Southend Standard)

Southend mother jumped from Victoria Shopping Centre

4:10pm Tuesday 30th October 2012 in Southend By David Trayner

A WOMAN who killed herself by jumping off a shopping centre car park had been sent home days earlier by a psychiatrist despite feeling suicidal and another doctor classing her “high-risk”.

Associate specialist psychiatrist Dr Khalid Saleem, of Basildon mental health unit, sent Keiko Redding, 65, home with a crisis phone number and instructions to call her GP nine days before she jumped from the Victoria Shopping Centre car park in Southend on April 29, an inquest at Southend Coroners Court heard today.

Her daughter, who gave her name only as Miss Redding, said: “I’m disappointed at the length of time it took the GP to be aware of the severity.

“She was prescribed antidepressants and sent on her way.”

Dr Irrum Tetlay classed Mrs Redding, of London Road, Southend, “high-risk” after she walked into Southend Hospital's A&E department complaining of suicidal thoughts on April 17.

But Nurse Mamade Aukburally, of South Essex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust’s Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Team, decided Mrs Redding would not benefit from his team’s help after assessing her on April 18.

He told the inquest Mrs Redding denied having suicidal thoughts to him and he believed anxiety she had suffered since falling in church in February was a bigger problem than depression.

Mr Aukburally referred Mrs Redding, who was already taking antidepressants that also treated anxiety, back to her GP, recommending therapy.

When Dr Saleem saw her two days later she denied ever saying she was suicidal.

He said: “She was handed over as per protocol.”

Mrs Redding, a committed Christian originally from Japan, suffered from a curved spine and hypertension, but she became seriously anxious about her ability to look after herself after bruising her hand in the fall on February 11.

The retired cleaner would repeatedly call her daughter hyperventilating as early as 5am – until Virgin Media blocked her calls to mobile numbers the day before she committed suicide because of her “excessive calls”.

Mrs Redding walked up the spiral car ramp of the 65ft-high car park, scaled a four-foot wall and fell, dying of multiple injuries.

Police found a note she had written in red pen in her possession reading simply: “Help me.”

Coroner Yvonne Blake said: “In all the circumstances I’m going to record a verdict of suicide.”