Fuming Cato Manor residents marched a local woman - who allegedly murdered her newborn - to the police station yesterday.
The mother, 34, is believed to have suffocated her one-day-old baby with a plastic bag after returning from the hospital.
On Saturday, an ambulance fetched the pregnant woman from her shack at the Cato Crest informal settlement and took her to King Edward Hospital, said neighbour Nombuso Mbele.
“She was discharged on Monday, but she came back home without the child.
“We were all curious, so we asked her where the child was,” she said.
“She said she was just in pain and she didn’t give birth.”
But women in the community were suspicious, refusing to believe that she had not given birth.
Early yesterday, Mbele and about 60 other women confronted the woman and demanded she tell the truth.
“She eventually admitted to us that when she got off the taxi from the hospital on Monday, she went into the bush and covered the baby’s head with a plastic bag.” The woman apparently led the group to the spot where she had left her child and the body was retrieved early yesterday morning.
“We were very angry. Even now, we are still so angry at her for what she has done. We took her straight to the police station, with the baby,” said Mbele.
It took police at the Cato Manor station some time to calm down the group of women.
She was arrested on an initial charge of concealment of birth, said police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Vincent Mdunge.
Police had still to determine whether the child had been born at the hospital.
The baby had been sent to the government mortuary where the exact cause of death would be determined.
“If it is found that the baby had indeed been murdered, the charge of concealment of birth will be converted to that of murder,” he said.
He said a woman was expected to appear in the Durban Magistrate’s Court tomorrow. - Daily News