There's nothing you could have done. Basile most likely though it was his bad luck that caused his father's accident. That if he hadn't been on the phone with his father that day, his father would still have been alive. This kid was carrying an enormous guilt on his shoulders.

That's why, with Quentin, he saw a second chance. Here was this kid who had survived death, and Basile saw an opportunity to protect him from further harm. He couldn't protect his father, who lost his life (there's your -1), but with Quentin surviving he was given a chance to keep another person alive and safe (+1). In Basile's mind it was probably as bizarre as this:

one must die for another to live. So because his father lost his life, death would allow another person (Quentin) to survive what might have otherwise killed him.

Either that, or he thought that his father's soul might have somehow ended up in Quentin, and that this was his "second chance".

Either way, I think that in Basile's mind the two accidents were connected.

He most likely suffered from a combination of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD, common in trauma victims) and schizophrenia. The latter causing him to hear voices and seeing things, the first causing him to zone out of reality, get stuck in his own head and suffer from nightmares. He would make up a world in his head where his father was still alive, and Quentin could still walk. A "what might have been" world, and he would feed off of those false memories, laugh and smile, even though he knew it wasn't real and would never happen.

Schizophrenia might also explain his personality change (attacking you, saying nasty things). He most likely had a voice in his head taking control over him in those moments, guiding him and telling him what to do.

The dark figure holding him by the throat in the drawing could possibly be that voice. It could also be that it was just a manifestation of how he was fighting guilt or reality (emptiness/darkness).

At least that's my take on it. I could be wrong.