School seeks caring hero
Attended to teacher left dying on street
GEORGE Randell Primary School is trying to track down a Good Samaritan who helped one of their teachers after he collapsed in a city centre street this week and lay unattended for hours.
Marimba teacher Simphiwe Madywadi, 41, died a day later at Frere Hospital from a suspected stroke.
The school’s foundation phase head Verushka Packery said Madywadi would have died on the street had it not been for the mystery young woman who came to his aid.
Packery described Madywadi, who joined the school about a year and a half ago and lived in Duncan Village, as “a true gentleman” who always dressed immaculately in a jacket or Madiba shirt.
She said the school, which held a memorial service for him yesterday morning, was trying to piece together what happened to their marimba coach after he left school on Tuesday.
“He didn’t report for school on Wednesday and so we called him on his cell because it wasn’t in character not to call, but his phone was off.”
Packery said a school staff member had been called two hours later by “a young lady” who told her Madywadi was lying near a taxi rank in the vicinity of lower Oxford Street.
“She said she had seen him lying there for a few hours and no-one had helped him and that she had tried to get the police and ambulance to come.
“She said she had also used his cellphone to call his mother who lives in Port Elizabeth as well as his friend. She had tried to get him conscious but he was not responding.”
Packery said a colleague tried and failed to find Madywadi in the city centre and went directly to Frere. Madywadi’s friend had come to his aid and taken him to hospital in a taxi.
“When I got to the hospital at 5pm on Wednesday he was semi-conscious and his hands were swollen. He was wearing the same clothes he had worn the previous day so he had possibly been lying there all night. He would not have worn the same clothes twice in a row.”
Madywadi, who had a history of epilepsy, died on Thursday afternoon of a suspected stroke.
“His mother travelled to see him and sat with him before he passed away.”
Packery said the school would like to trace and thank the woman who helped the teacher who is survived by two young children and his mother.
“She was the hero. She saw that this man could be someone’s dad. Without her he would have died on the street.” — barbarah@dispatch.co.za