‘My partner was spat at … then died of Covid-19’
Joe Shute and Chris Terrill hear of Trevor Belle’s tragic death – and why his family hopes he can help in the search for a cure
Aweek ago today, a convoy of 20 black cabs drove towards the City of London Cemetery in Manor Park, forming a guard of honour in tribute to one of their own, claimed by Covid-19. Only 20 mourners were allowed inside the crematorium for the service in memory of 61-year-old Trevor Belle, including his long-term partner, Kelly Esqulant, and their three children. The rest waited outside the cemetery gates.
Trevor died alone on the Covid wards of the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. He had fallen ill after being spat on by a passenger in his black cab, who, when challenged for refusing to pay his £9 fare, shouted: “I’ve got the coronavirus – and now you’ve got it, too.”
In her first interview since the death of her partner of 28 years – with whom she celebrated the birth of their first grandson four months ago – Kelly admits the family has been left utterly broken. “I still can’t understand how somebody could do that to another person,” she says.
Although his family admit they will never know if this was the moment Trevor contracted Covid-19, an investigation by The Daily Telegraph last month highlighted how fear has been weaponised, with police forces in England and Wales dealing with around 200 incidents a week of people spitting and coughing at officers while claiming to be infected.
Trevor’s story bears a similarity to the tragic death of another London transport worker, 47-year-old Belly Mujinga, who died after being spat at on the concourse of Victoria Station by a man who claimed to have the virus (police interviewed a 57-year-old man in connection with the incident this week). Like Belly, Trevor fell ill just days later.
A prodigious worker who took pride in having the cleanest cab on the rank, Trevor had been accepting fares up to the day of the spitting incident, which happened on March 22 at around 12.30pm on West Ham Lane in Stratford. Perhaps he caught the virus from handling cash or picking up a traveller from City Airport, Kelly admits. But she points out that he had been taking every precaution possible.
Kelly, who works as a patient liaison officer at Newham Hospital (though she has not been patient-facing since the outbreak, because she has type 2 diabetes), said she had pleaded with her partner to be careful and ensure he wore gloves and masks, which he changed between fares.
“My desk at work is right opposite the mortuary, and I said to Trevor, I’ve seen so many porters with body bags this week and it’s really scary,” the 50-year-old recalls.
When the passenger – who Trevor described to Kelly as white with an Irish accent – ran off after spitting at him, Trevor flagged down a nearby police van and reported the incident. Kelly claims he was told the matter was not worth pursuing for a £9 fare.
Left with their twins, aged 22, and 12-year-old son Finley, Kelly is now in the process of reporting the incident again. She has also written to Boris Johnson, but is yet to receive a reply.
When he returned home on the afternoon of the assault, Trevor refused to go out to work again and stayed at home in Bow, east London, with his family. Four days later, he started to suffer flu-like symptoms. Over the weekend, his condition rapidly deteriorated, and on the morning of March 30, Kelly woke up to find him struggling to breathe. She called for an ambulance and Trevor was taken away. “That was the last time I saw him alive,” she says.
Trevor phoned that same afternoon from hospital, struggling to speak through a mask, to say he was being admitted to intensive care and was “terrified”. “I told him not to talk and to save his breath to get as much oxygen as possible,” Kelly says. The following day, a nurse telephoned to say he had suffered complications and had been put into an induced coma.
Even for a family used to navigating the NHS – their daughter, Ellie-mae, is a student nurse at King’s College London – Kelly says the following weeks were a desperate battle for information, as they were banned from visiting the hospital, in order to help contain the virus. Over those agonising weeks, Kelly was approached by a research team at the hospital and asked if Trevor would be willing to donate a sample of his blood for a new project attempting to sequence the genomes of thousands of sufferers of Covid-19 in the hope of unlocking preventive medicines and – ultimately – a cure.
She did not hesitate to give consent. “I know my Trevor, and he would have said if you can use that to do something that could help millions in the future, then do it.”
Trevor’s sample (taken from waste blood which otherwise was to be disposed of) was the very first to be collected at Barts Health by the genomics research team, which is headed by Sir Mark Caulfield, a professor of clinical pharmacology at Queen Mary University who is described as one of the most influential researchers in the world.
The team, which also includes experts from Genomics England, is hoping to collect samples from 20,000 patients severely affected and 15,000 who have had the illness but only reported mild symptoms. Comparing the two, explains Sir Mark, will help establish which genetic factors determine the severity of the virus.
Last week, Dr Hans Kluge, director for the World Health Organisation in Europe, warned of a second deadly wave of infections later this year, and the research team are now in a race against time to secure as many samples as possible. Having amassed around 4,000, they hope to complete the first part of sequencing this summer, but need many more people to come forward.
The Barts team is calling on everyone to carry a research volunteer card, suggesting a willingness to join in studies.
Sir Mark says the study is unique, due to this country’s investment in genomics and the partnership with the NHS. A vaccine being available by the winter is, he says, “very unlikely”. Instead our hopes rest on repurposing existing drugs – and to do this, unpicking the microbiology of the virus is key.
“This is a virus that has the potential to come back in a secondary or tertiary wave,” Sir Mark says. “How soon we address that depends on our understanding of the biology of what is happening.”
‘I know he would have said if you can use my blood to help millions, then do it’
The knowledge that Trevor may still be able to help others proved a solace for Kelly and her family during the last few weeks of his life. “I just want to stop other people going through what our family has had to,” she says.
Trevor’s birthday was on April 15 and – as Kelly says it does each year – the sun shone. The family had a barbecue in the garden, which was typically his favourite way to celebrate. They hoped to phone the hospital to sing “Happy Birthday” to him, but were told the intensive care wards were too busy.
A day or so later, a nurse put the phone beside Trevor’s pillow while his family took turns in speaking. Finley told his Arsenal-mad father that his team was at the top of the Premier League table and the nurse reported Trevor’s eyeballs started moving inside their lids.
The following day, on April 18, the family hoped to have a video call but were told there had been some complications. After repeated requests for information a doctor telephoned Kelly at 11.45pm and informed her that Trevor had died.
Finally, she was allowed to visit him, but it was in the hospital morgue. “He looked lovely,” she says, quietly. “He just looked like my Trevor.”
More than £5,000 has been raised in memory of Trevor at gofundme.com/f/trevor-belle. For more about the Genome project, visit trialsconnect.org