Tracy Andrews returned to her Hill Street, Albouystown home on Tuesday night, to what is every mother’s nightmare, and found her husband screaming and clutching their two-month-old daughter who later died after having difficulty breathing.
Malika Cassia Mullin is the second child Andrews and her reputed husband have lost. Her eyes red and swollen from weeping, the distressed Andrews told Stabroek News yesterday afternoon that she left her daughter sleeping on the bed sometime after 11 pm.
“I give de father food to de children,” the woman recalled, “and it ain’t had nothing lef’ for him to eat so I lef’ she on de bed good and everything and went to buy a chinese food fuh he [her reputed husband].”
Tracy said she’d walked a “lil way” when a man screamed out that her husband was on the street holding their daughter and hollering. By the time she got home her daughter was struggling for a breath. They immediately made arrangements to rush the baby to the hospital.
“Me and meh husband get a drop from these people to de public hospital but when de car hit de hospital gate is right there meh daughter life lef’ she…I start to scream,” Tracy related.
The distressed mother said that her reputed husband was holding Mullin and rushed with her to the Georgetown Public Hospital’s (GPH) emergency room but doctors and nurses could do nothing. Sometime ago Andrews also lost a son who was only ten days old.
In a press statement yesterday afternoon GPH said “at 01:40hrs, a 2-month-old female, of 25 Hill Street, Albouystown was brought to the Accident and Emergency unit after it was reported that her mother left her lying on a bed with two mattresses and upon her return, she found that the child was not breathing. She was seen and pronounced dead on arrival.”
Just over two weeks ago, the woman said, she’d taken her daughter to GPH for medical attention after she heard “a rattling” in her chest. Andrews said she suspected her daughter had a cold but she said the doctor who examined the child told her that children that age could not get a cold and there was nothing wrong with Mullin.
“I know something de wrong with my child cause when she breathing she does get like this rattling in she like if she got a cold,” the woman said, “yesterday afternoon [Monday] I take she over to we neighbour and even she notice the noise in meh child chest.”
Andrews, 28, has five other children. The oldest is 10 years and the youngest 2 years. The woman said that a post-mortem will be conducted on Mullin tomorrow and she will most likely bury her on Saturday morning.
