Burglar bars of death

Published Mar 2, 2015

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Johannesburg - As Shanie-Lee Jacobs was sprinting to the nearby Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital, the gurgling noises stopped.

Cradled in her arms, her 3-year-old son Mikyle had stopped responding to her words. She could see only the whites of his eyes.

Moments earlier, he had been playing outside his Westbury, Joburg, home with other neighbourhood children. But when the 3-year-old grabbed the burglar bars on the outside of his home, his tiny body went limp.

The laughter of the other children turned to screams when Mikyle stopped moving, his hands still gripped tightly on the burglar bars and a small railing.

When an adult neighbour tried to move the tot, he felt a massive shock go through him. Somehow, the railing and the burglar bars had become electrified. Shanie-Lee and her husband Randy ran outside as neighbours tried to give the boy CPR.

Shanie-Lee immediately picked up her son, who was still making soft, gurgling noises.

As she dashed to the hospital, the child went quiet. She tried to resuscitate her son through mouth-to-mouth breathing, desperately searching for a pulse. It was faint, but still there.

Even after a Good Samaritan stopped his car and drove them the remaining distance, there was little doctors could do for the child.

When Shanie-Lee and Randy spoke to The Star last week, the couple were inconsolable.

“He was only 3-and-a-half-years-old. I miss him so much,” said Randy, struggling to complete the sentence.

But as the parents mourn their child, who has already been buried, they and a significant portion of the local community are blaming City Power for Mikyle’s death.

The DA branch chairman of the ward, Chahracan Amod, said a lack of maintenance on the local electricity boxes had led to the fault that killed the child.

He added that electrical issues, from exposed live cables to earth-leakage problems, were common in Westbury. He said City Power had ignored the problems for years.

Amod said there had been no maintenance on the homes’ individual power boxes for years, and residents had to beg the utility for assistance that often did not come.

“(City Power) don’t care that they’ve lost a child, no one has come through to help this family,” he said.

Randy and Shanie-Lee also spoke of how it took until the morning after Mikyle had died for City Power engineers to arrive at their home to disable the electrical threat.

The home was completely cut off from the power grid and, in the three weeks since Mikyle’s death, Shanie-Lee and Randy say they haven’t heard a word from City Power on when they will be reconnected.

“I want to know where the problem came from; someone has to be held responsible,” Randy told The Star.

City Power spokesman Sol Masolo confirmed that an earth-leakage problem led to the electrification of the railing and burglar bars outside the house.

He said it was not the utility’s fault. The home’s internal wiring was to blame.

“We can only work up to the electricity meter,” Masolo said.

He added that the reason City Power officials had shut off the power was to allow the family time to bring in a private electrician, who could solve the fault and give the family a compliance certificate. He said the power could be turned back on thereafter.

In response to the claim that no maintenance was done in the area, Masolo said the fact there was electricity in the area was proof enough of regular maintenance.

Asked about the numerous exposed electrical wires seen by The Star in and around the area, he said this was a result of illegal connections, which City Power was trying to combat.

“We repair them as the issues are reported to us,” he said.

The family said they were consulting lawyers.

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