“Ask people to pray that we come home,” Durban father Stuart Fuller pleaded on Sunday.
His daughter, Kathryn, may have done a “stupid” thing by taking cocaine while on a working trip to Uganda, but Fuller is desperate for her to return to SA to receive treatment for paralysis to her right side after taking the drugs, he said from the Ugandan capital Kampala on Sunday.
“She gave the police her statement; she didn’t buy (the drugs) and she has paid the price.”
Fuller has rubbished “conspiracy” theories that his daughter and film-maker Jeff Rice were poisoned or forced to take the cocaine.
The pair were in Uganda to prepare for a film Rice was producing, with Kathryn working as his assistant. However, Rice was found dead in the hotel where they were staying just over a week ago and Kathryn was hospitalised for what seems to have been a stroke.
The Sunday Tribune reported that both police in Uganda and private investigator Brad Nathanson believe that contaminated cocaine rather than foul play was to blame, and that the hotel pool boy had subsequently been arrested for supplying the drugs.
Nathanson said that while he had originally travelled to Kampala to assist Rice’s widow, Sally Blackman, in getting her husband’s body back to SA, he had extended his stay to try to assist Fuller. Blackman declined to speak to The Mercury on Sunday.
Fuller, who flew to Kampala last Sunday, said his family was suffering immense financial and emotional strain.
“I am cross, extremely cross. She’s an extremely bright woman who made a mistake.
“After this, she’ll have to prove herself. We’ve been through hell, but which father wouldn’t rush to support his daughter?” Fuller said.
“She can regain the use of her right side, but needs to come to South Africa for treatment and to recuperate,” he added.
Fuller said that although staff at the day clinic who were attending to Kathryn were doing their best, they did not have facilities “like we have in South Africa”.
He said his daughter was not being held against her will and despite Ugandan police being “phenomenal”, they were awaiting clearance from the authorities to leave the country.
Nathanson said, however, that while Kathryn had not been charged, the possibility that she could be prosecuted could not be ruled out.
Fuller was adamant that Kathryn had not taken drugs before, and said that she had apologised. He added that his heart went out to Rice’s wife and two children.
International Relations Department spokesman Clayson Monyela would not say whether the SA government was pushing for Rice’s body and for Kathryn to be repatriated. - The Mercury