A PSYCHIATRIC patient was charged last night with the murder of a banker, who was killed in a frenzied knife attack while cycling through a London park.

John Barrett, 41, who is believed to have a history of violence and mental illness, is accused of killing Denis Finnegan, 50, who was “ambushed” on Thursday morning.

The banker’s attacker leapt from behind an oak tree in Richmond Park, southwest London, and repeatedly stabbed him before running off across the park. Mr Finnegan, who was on a career break and had once worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland, was left to die from a wound to the heart.

After the attack, four police officers rushed to the scene and tried to resuscitate him but he was certified dead at Charing Cross Hospital in West London three hours later. The banker, who lived in Putney, southwest London, was formally identified yesterday by members of his family after a post-mortem examination.

He was described by his family as the “life and soul of the party”. Although he was unmarried, he had a large family including two sisters and three brothers.

His sister Anne May Peyton, who lives in the village of Hough, in Cheshire, was too distressed last night to talk about the attack. Her husband David said that the tragedy has hit them all hard. “We are trying to keep our grief private,” he said. “What I can say is that he was a successful banker enjoying a career break. We do not really know what happend to Denis. It is all a complete shock and perhaps too soon to talk about it.”

Mr Barrett, who is from Putney, South London, and is unemployed, is believed to have received treatment as a voluntary patient at Springfields Hospital, South London, and had been discharged.

The murder has led to increased concerns about the level of care and monitoring provided to psychiatric patients in the community.

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity SANE, said her organisation had dealt with 12 murders and 20 suicides in the past year involving mental health patients.

She said: “We are becoming increasingly concerned at people who are being discharged or allowed to leave hospital without critical information being given to the community.” She added that if the public cannot be convinced that sound judgments have been made, and those responsible for the care of those with mental illness are not given vital information, such tragedies will destroy all the work done to remove the stigma surrounding mental health.

Mr Barrett has been treated as a paranoid schizophrenic and was in hospital the day before the murder but then left.

A spokeswoman for the South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust said that the Trust would be assisting the police. She said the man should have been the subject of a care plan and doctors, social workers and police should have agreed on his treatment and his monitoring in the community.

Yesterday police and forensic scientists dressed in protective overalls could be seen searching the park which was marked out as police tried to trace the escape route of the killer and searched for the weapon used in the attack. Detectives also interviewed a number of witnesses who went to Mr Finnegan’s aid.

Used by thousands of people every week, Richmond Park is different from other parks in that serious crime is rare. Many regular users turned away by police expressed their shock.

“I’m stunned,” said Christina Haab, who often cycles across the park. She and other users of the park said that they had never considered safety as an issue before.

A female neighbour of Mr Finnegan, who declined to be named, said that he was a pleasant man who could be seen heading off at weekends with his golf clubs.

Mr Finnegan lived in an apartment in a large Victorian semi-detached house, in Putney, South West London, that had been converted into two flats.

• In a separate incident, detectives were last night questioning a man who stormed the headquarters of MI5 and the Northern Ireland Office wielding a machete and a large knife. Two security guards were injured after the man went berserk in Thames House in Westminister.

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