A SURVIVOR of the Paddington rail crash who killed a drunken pedestrian has been ordered to be detained at a psychiatric hospital.

Kerrie Gray stabbed John Boultwood, a father of two, after he stepped in front of his car in Tilbury, Essex, in 2001. Gray was charged with murder, but Wood Green Crown Court accepted his plea of manslaughter on the ground of diminished responsibility.

Gray, 42, a council officer, had got out of his car and punched and kicked Mr Boultwood before passers-by intervened. He got a kitchen knife from the home of his girlfriend’s mother and searched for Mr Boultwood. He kicked him, grabbed him by the neck, pushed him against a wall and stabbed him seven times, including twice in the heart.

Mrs Justice Rafferty told Gray yesterday: “You returned with a vicious knife, again frustrating efforts to stop you, and with several stab wounds you wrecked the lives of his family.”

She accepted experts’ findings “that your involvement in the rail crash has meant you endured a mental illness”. She ruled that he be held under the Mental Health Act.

After the hearing Mr Boultwood’s mother expressed disgust at the sentence: “His parents can see him whenever they like, but I cannot see my son except at his grave. John was a lovely person; he did not deserve to die like this.”

The court had been told that Gray had pushed past his girlfriend’s mother, “his eyes popping out” in rage.

He had walked into a police station the next day and said that Mr Boultwood banging on his window brought back memories of the crash. Patricia Lynch, QC, for the prosecution, said that no one knew whether his rage had, rather, been triggered by his girlfriend ending their relationship.

In the 1999 crash Gray was thrown through a window. He later suffered from depression.

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