Claims woman died in mortuary

THE family of an Okahandja man accused of murdering his girlfriend on Christmas night are suggesting that the girl’s death was in fact the result of negligence on the part of hospital staff and the Police.

Judika ‘Poppie’ !Uri-≠khos and her boyfriend Nekongo Noabeb spent Christmas night with friends and family at the farm Klein Barmen near the Gross Barmen resort. A fight erupted between the two at around 02h00 the next morning, on their way back home to Okahandja.Noabeb allegedly stabbed !Uri≠khos in the thigh. She bled profusely and apparently passed out while Noabeb and her family went searching for help.According to Noabeb’s brother Kenneth, who was present, they only managed to get help around 04h00 when the Police arrived.The two officers apparently could feel no pulse, declared !Uri≠khos dead and took her body to the State Mortuary at Okahandja. ‘At the hospital, the two officers straightened her body, took off her clothes and filled in a piece of paper and asked for the keys to the mortuary. The security guard gave the keys and the two policemen put the body into the morgue,’ Noabeb said.At around 09h00 the next day, Noabeb’s sister Julia Uutoni says she went to identify the body after hearing of the previous night’s incident, she told The Namibian yesterday.She saw a frightful sight when the nurse removed the body from the refrigerator, she said, and she was convinced that !Uri≠khos had still been alive when placed in the cooler.’We found both her eyes and mouth open, her one arm was over her face and the other one over her head. And her legs were in the air. It was clear to us that she was put in the mortuary while she was still alive and that she had been fighting for her life while in there,’ said Uutoni.Uutoni said a nurse and an ambulance driver who had also seen the body were just as shocked as she was. The nurse refused to comment when The Namibian approached her, although Uutoni’s report was corroborated by the ambulance driver, Stephanus Doëseb.’I can’t speak for anything besides what I saw,’ he said, demonstrating how he, Uutoni and the nurse tried to straighten !Uri≠khos’s arms and close her eyes.Attempts to see !Uri-≠khos’s death certificate and to get comment from authorities at the Okahandja State Hospital proved futile yesterday.Chief Matron Pea Kalipi said she was not in a position to comment, while the Medical Superintendent, one Dr Tumba, also refused to comment or allow access to the records.However, a source at the hospital told The Namibian that there was no record of any doctor declaring !Uri-≠khos dead on her death certificate.The Namibian tried to get comment from the Police at the town, although the station commander was said to be out of town.A Police officer who requested anonymity rejected any suggestions of negligence on their part, saying that !Uri≠khos had been thoroughly checked on the crime scene before she was moved.’Judging from her eyes alone, one could tell she was dead. Her boyfriend had cut through some veins and she bled to death. Also, they had been drinking and that obviously increased the rate at which she bled,’ he said.Asked about the strange posture in which the woman’s body was found the next day, he suggested this could have been the result of stiffening inside the mortuary cooler.It is understood that, according to procedure, any person thought dead and taken into a hospital needs to be declared dead by a medical doctor.Noabeb is in custody at the Okahandja Police station. His case returns to court on January 25.According to a death certificate provided by the family, the cause of !Uri≠khos’s death is still under investigation. She has been b!Uried in the meantime.Dr Kidaaga Fredrick of the Namibian Institute of Pathology (NID) told The Namibian that it is impossible for a dead person who is put into the cooler in one position to emerge from there in another position. ‘Once somebody is declared dead with no vital signs such as no respiration, no heartbeat or pulse, it is impossible for the person to come out of the mortuary redirected,’ he said.