Boy in coma after 'suicide' game
2005-07-21 10:44
Pretoria - A 10-year-old boy is in a coma at the Bougunville hospital in Pretoria after a game he'd been playing with school friends went horribly wrong.
Juvan Smit hanged himself with his school blazer from the burglar bars of a
toilet on Tuesday.
The boy stays at the aftercare centre at the school, which asked not to be named,
until his mother Daleen fetches him after work.
No-one knows exactly what happened, as Juvan was unconscious when he was
taken down from the burglar bars. His blazer was tied around his neck.
Daleen Smit's fiancé, Jurie de Meyer, says it seems as if the children had been playing
a game in which the pupil hanging from the burglar bars had to free himself.
"We'll probably only learn exactly what happened at a later stage.
"Apparently the boys playing with Juvan got such a fright that they ran away without calling for help.
"It was only later, when they went back to the toilet and saw him
still hanging there, that one of them called a teacher.
"But it was too late. Juvan had already slipped into a coma. They phoned us and we rushed there.
"We got him to hospital as fast as we could."
De Meyer says Juvan is in a very deep coma.
"He's really not doing well."
Daleen Smit is a widow. Her husband committed suicide a few years ago.