Double tragedy for widow
2007-08-24 08:51
Rustenburg - The former husband of a woman whose second husband-to-be died in bed next to her on the eve of their wedding, died in the same manner after collapsing a year ago.
Gerda Pretorius, 43, and her fiancé Gerhard Pieterse, 33, put flowers on Sarel Pretorius's grave last Thursday - the anniversary of his death. He died on August 16 2006.
"Gerhard stood there crying with me. That was the kind of person he was. I will never meet someone like him again."
According to Pretorius, her husband of 12 years had died of a heart attack.
Pieterse collapsed that evening after drinking a couple of beers and a number of shots of Sambuca.
Pretorius and her children threw him a bachelor's party, as it would have been his first marriage.
He died during the early hours of the morning after never regaining consciousness.
Paramedics deny claims
Meanwhile, the North West health department has denied allegations that paramedics who treated him didn't want to take him to hospital.
Lwandile Sicwetsha, the departmental spokesperson, said Pretorius and her children refused to let them take him to hospital.
It took an ambulance about an hour-and-a-half to get to Pretorius's house in Ooseinde.
Although there were five ambulances deployed in the area, reaction times were hampered by the large number of hoax calls to the emergency services.
The department did not react to questions about the treatment Pieterse had received on the scene. He was apparently classified as a Priority 3 patient (P3). Such a patient should be awake and walking around.
A post-mortem was done in Rustenburg on Thursday as part of the police inquest into his death, said police spokesperson Captain Elsabe Augoustides.
The cause of death was not known yet, as blood and tissue samples still had to be sent to Pretoria for forensic analysis.
Augustides said anybody with information about what had happened on the night of Pieterse's death can call Inspector Thomas Mogorosi of the Rustenburg detective branch at 014 590-4238.