MOKOPANE – A four-year-old’s death at Mokopane Primary School’s preschool facility left many shocked and her family heartbroken.
Her postmortem results were recently released and showed she died of an accidental hanging.
As reported earlier by Bosveld, Blessing Matjeke died at her preschool on Friday, 9 February when she slid down a slide at school and the strings of her windbreaker jacket got stuck at the top of the slide.
Read more: Freak accident leads to the death of Mokopane pre-schooler
Her mother, Portia, says the family is still very traumatised.
“We still miss our child and have memories of her everywhere in the house.
“My husband, Thomas, and I are still quite angry about what happened.
“We feel like we do not want to leave the matter there but as a family we are still deciding what we will do later on.”
Portia told Bosveld shortly after her daughter’s death that “when the school called us and said my daughter had been in an accident and they are with her at the Voortrekker Hospital, our hearts stopped beating for a moment.
“They told us she slid down a slide and the strings of her jacket got hooked on it.
“The teachers found her hanging from the top of the slide.”
The postmortem states there was no external injuries observed, moderate brain swelling, deep neck muscle contusion, heavy, firm and enlarged lungs with petechial haemorrhage, severely oedematous and congested lungs, petechial haemorrhage on the heart, congested liver and kidney and a reactive spleen.
The Principal, Ockert Groenewald, says that he can’t give any comment at the moment as he has not yet seen the postmortem results. After the accident, Groenewald said he was shocked, adding something like this had never happened in his time as teacher before.
He gave his condolences to the family and said the incident was very traumatic.
Groenewald told Bosveld: “The incident is very traumatic for us.
“The principal of the pre-school, Anneke van Huyssteen, phoned me saying the children called the teachers on duty for help and they found Blessing hanging from the top of the slide.
“They immediately freed her and Van Huyssteen gave her mouth to mouth resuscitation but her heart was not beating.”
Groenewald adds while he phoned the School Governing Body, he asked Deputy Principal, Amy van Deventer, to drive to the preschool and rush Blessing to the hospital.
Blessing was buried in Tsamahansi on Saturday, 17 February.
