Tragic mother killed as she lay down on M1 in the night
29-year-old had earlier knocked on doors asking for a tea party
A MENTALLY-ILL mother went from house to house trying to get her neighbours up in the middle of the night to have a cup of tea with her, minutes before she was killed on the M1.
Rachael Matheson, 29, who had a five-year-old son, lived near the motorway in Gloster Road, Lutterworth, where she was not known to her neighbours.
But at 2am on Thursday, October 4, she went out on a child’s scooter and went from door to door, knocking and ringing bells to get people in the street to have tea with her.
Her neighbours contacted the police and the ambulance service because they were concerned about her mental health.
Ambulance call centre manager Susan Jevons said that in the 999 calls there was no mention of Rachael having suicidal thoughts, or of the motorway.
The coroner, Lydia Brown, asked: “What about if she had been saying, ‘I’m going to walk on to the motorway’?”
Ms Jevons replied that the call would have been transferred to a member of clinical staff, but added that while one mental health nurse is always in the control room, there is often a queue to speak to them.
She said: “We’re using agency (staff) at the moment due to the amount of calls we are receiving.”
Rachael, who had an “unstable personality disorder”, told one neighbour her name was Alice in Wonderland and made a comment about the traffic on the nearby motorway, before riding the scooter up the road. Later, at about 3am, a neighbour followed her while on the phone to the emergency services as she climbed a fence to get to the M1.
She lay down in the first lane of the motorway and two vehicles managed to swerve around her and pulled up on the hard shoulder to help her.
A third, possibly distracted by the other vehicles’ hazard lights, hit her and she died at the scene.
An inquest at Leicester Town Hall on Monday (November 18) heard from the neighbour who called 999.
He said Rachael knocked on his door and rang his doorbell before walking off to other houses.
He said: “She went to a couple of houses with dogs and the dogs were all barking. She told us she wanted everyone to come out for a cup of tea and it would be nice if the whole street got out for a cup of tea.”
He phoned police, who told him to ring 999 again and ask for the ambulance service instead.
As he was on the phone to the East Midlands Ambulance Service dispatcher, he tried to ask Rachael her name but she just said “Alice in Wonderland”.
He said she spoke about how bright the moon was before mentioning the motorway. He said: “She craned her neck and listened to the motorway and she said there wasn’t anything going fast enough on the motorway.”
At that stage Rachael went back inside her home and was “at the kitchen window, staring out quite blankly”.
The neighbour, who was in his pyjamas, went back to his house and watched the street from his window.
At about 3am Rachael came out of her house again and began walking towards the motorway and the neighbour followed. She started climbing up a small hill and over a fence towards the motorway.
He said: “She had already made her way over the top of it by the time I got there.
“It was pitch black on the other side. I could make out a figure moving through the bracken to the motorway.
“I stayed on the phone to the police.”
He and another neighbour got to the motorway just as Rachael, lying on her back on the northbound carriageway, was hit.
■ The inquest continues. top, on the