Rats eat baby's corpse

2003-03-14 23:22

Annelie Muller

Port Elizabeth - A local family are still in shock after first receiving a false message that their baby daughter had died, and then after she in fact died later, her body was apparently eaten by rats in the mortuary.

Colette Meyer struggles to hold back her tears when talking about the gruesome circumstances surrounding Ashnay's death.

"I can still smell my child - the rotten stench coming from her coffin," the mother said.

Ashnay was admitted to the Livingstone hospital on February 3. "She had convulsions," said her grandmother Cynthia Meyer.

The next morning undertakers arrived at Ashnay's home. They told Colette her daughter had died. The undertakers gave her a lift and picked up her husband, Ashley, who was on his way to work.

"They dropped us off at the hospital and gave us their business card. They told us to phone them when we needed them," Colette said.

Meanwhile the grandmother had started calling friends and family with the news that the baby had died. "On arriving at the hospital my children found Ashnay alive and well. She ate a good meal and played," said Cynthia. She then had to call everyone to tell them the child was still alive.

But Ashnay died the next morning, February 5. "Undertakers hover around hospitals like vultures. When it looks like someone is about to die, they rush to the family to try and reach them first," a dismayed Cynthia, who had to telephone everyone again, said.

The family visited the mortuary on Thursday. "I looked at my child. Her body was perfect. We completed forms naming the undertakers who were to handle the funeral," Colette said.

The undertakers collected Ashnay's body on Friday. On Monday morning shortly before the funeral the Meyers suffered another shock.

"The undertakers called, asking whether Ashnay had suffered burns, as her skin had come off. I told them not to seal the coffin, I wanted to make sure it was my child. There was nothing wrong with my child's skin," Colette said.

A small coffin bearing Ashnay's body was deposited in her parents' lounge. "The skin on her face was gone and her eyes were protruding. A dreadful stench was coming from the coffin."

Her brother, Angelo Pieterse prevented her from looking. "We cannot understand this. It was dreadful."

Colette says the undertakers sealed the coffin and instructed them to keep quiet about what they had seen. "I was just too exhausted to fight with the man," the shocked mother said.

Only after Cynthia had read in a newspaper that rats were eating bodies in Livingstone Hospital did she realise what had happened to her granddaughter.

"Our family has not recovered from all the shocks we have suffered,"

It is suspected Ashnay had contracted tuberculosis and meningitis.

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