Amandala late this evening spoke with a horrified and very angry mother, Semona Bacab, a resident of Rivero Street, who said that she is convinced that someone at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital (KHMH) put her son, Jomo Lamb, 15, who was shot five times on Thursday night, April 18, in the morgue when he was not dead, leading, she believes, to his death.
Semona and other family members visited the morgue on Friday morning to view her son’s body, and she told Amandala that when she saw him he was bleeding from the mouth and nose. She insists that the blood was warm, which could not have been the case if he had died from Thursday night.
Semona said she visited the hospital also on Saturday evening, and Jomo was still bleeding warm blood. Jomo’s body was still limber, she said, because his head and body could be moved easily, which could not have been the case if rigor mortis had set in, especially if he was already dead on Thursday night.
Semona said that she made three trips to the morgue on Friday, April 20, the day after her son had been shot. She made the first one sometime after 10:00 a.m., the second about 1:00 p.m. and the third around 4:00 in the evening. On all three trips her son was bleeding from his mouth and nose.
When she returned with family members on Saturday morning, sometime between 9:00-10:00, she could see that the blood which had been coming out of his nose and mouth, had dried and had settled near the lower part of his eyes, because he was lying on his back.
But there was fresh blood still, said Semona, this time coming out of his ears. As a matter of fact, the blood was a bright red in color and was dripping off his ears. When they lifted the sheets with which he had been covered, you could see the blood running down the sheets, she said. It was when she touched the blood that she knew that her son could not have been dead, because the blood was still warm, she insisted.
Not understanding how that could have been, she took several people, including her daughter, a teacher, a soldier who is her friend, and a taxi driver to see what she had seen. They observed it for themselves, and agreed that her son was not dead when he was put in the morgue.
A little while later, after Semona came out of the morgue, she met a friend who is an attendant there. She told him about what she had seen, and the two of them, including her daughter, turned back to return to the morgue.
Semona said that when they went there, however, they observed that someone had stuffed cotton balls in her son’s nostrils and ears. There was also a white band tied around his mouth to the top of his head, to keep the mouth closed, they were told by another attendant they met in there.
She then asked to see a doctor, saying that she saw blood on her son. The nurses made a mockery of her when she went to the emergency section of the hospital to find out who was the doctor that certified him as dead. They were very insulting, she said, with even the security officer telling her that no one had the time to reopen the morgue for her, just because she could not get over the death of her son.
Semona spoke with a doctor, who did nothing for her. He told her that he had dealt with a child who had been “rotten” before, and while he was conducting a post-mortem the child was still bleeding in the same fashion – from mouth, nose and ears. It was possible, he tried to convince her, but she said she could not take that answer from him, not after what she had seen on Jomo with her own eyes.
Eventually Semona managed to speak this morning, Monday, with Gary Ayuso, public relations officer for the hospital. She told him that she was not happy about the circumstances of her son’s death. She explained to Ayuso that no doctor had spoken with her or her family members, who were present, from the time her son was taken to the hospital to this present time.
A post-mortem is scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, she said.
Semona said that on the night Lamb was shot, she arrived at KHMH shortly after the police arrived with her son. She immediately went inside, and was met by a nurse whom she knows well. The nurse told her not to take things too hard, and then told her that her son, Jomo Lamb, had been pronounced dead.
“That couldn’t be,” she told the nurse, “I had just been informed that he was alive.”
Going into the room she saw her son lying on a bed. In the room were a nurse and a BERT employee. The BERT employee was the one who actually pronounced her son dead. No doctor ever spoke with her.
Looking at her son, she could not take the pain and she collapsed in a fit. She was taken to the observation room, where she was monitored by a nurse. She believes that she left the room within ten minutes, because she had been revived quickly. The nurse was only waiting for her to feel better, and when they came into the corridor Jomo was already being taken to the morgue. He was covered on a trolley.
No doctor had said that he was dead, but here he was, being rolled off to the morgue.
We spoke with Gary Ayuso a little after 5:00 this evening, and he said that he had received the report from Bacab. He has filed the report, he said, and the hospital is looking into the matter.
Until the matter is fully investigated, which would be in 2-3 days, he had no comment, said Ayuso.