By Weswa Ronnie
BUSIA
A father in Busia is shedding uncontrollable tears after one of his children suffocated to death, leaving three others in critical condition.
The unfortunate incident happened on Monday, 15th January, 2024 at Sofia B cell, Eastern Division in Busia district at about 7:00PM
According to Moses Mugwe, the Bukedi South Region Police Spokesperson, the father of the deceased and injured children is George Mukhwana.
He says Mukhwana who has been singlehandedly taking care of his children as his wife was away in Soroti awaiting an operation, lit a charcoal stove on the veranda and put matooke to boil.
He then left for the nearby market to buy sauce, he however took more than 30 minutes prompting the children to carry the sigiri inside their one roomed house and closed the door.
Mugwe says preliminary investigations show that the children eventually dozed off leaving the matooke to burn causing the smoke that led to their suffocation.
“Since there was no alert in observance of the food on the charcoal stove, the food started burning thereby produced smoke and by the time Mukhwana George returned to his home, none of the four children could respond to his call,” says Mugwe in his January 18th Statement.
This forced him to make an alarm and neighbours responded, and helped in breaking the door and on entering the house, it was confirmed that the food was burning, the amount of smoke in the house was overwhelming, and the four children were unconscious.
The four unconscious children were rushed to Nebolola Clinic within Sofia Cell in Busia Town. Unfortunately one Alinda Patra could not recover from the asphyxia state, but the other three managed to stabilize by the morning of 16/01/2024 at about 1000 hrs.
The deceased is known as Alinda Patra aged 9, meanwhile those in critical condition are; John Savio Musulwa aged 10 years, Wilborn Wekoyela, aged 3 years and George Odinga aged 4 years.
Mugwe says that the body of the deceased has been taken to Busia health centre 4 for postmortem as investigations continue.
