A father and two of his children who died after a suspected gas leak at their home, were given a tearful goodbye at a packed church service.
|||Cape Town - A father and two of his children who died in a suspected gas leak at their home, were buried on Thursday.
Keanan Manuel, 54, Ashley, nine, and Caitlin, six, were buried after a service in the Good Shepherd Anglican Church in Grassy Park.
The church was packed with friends, family and pupils from the schools the two children attended.
A relative, Andre Walters, said he would always remember Manuel’s kindness.
“He was a great and kind man.”
One of Ashley’s teachers at Kannemeyer Primary School sobbed as she told the congregation about her beloved pupil. “I will always look at your now empty desk and wish to talk to you one last time, give you some work to do before saying goodbye,” said the teacher, only identified as Mrs Reddy.
Manuel’s stepdaughter, Chandre Koopman, who survived the incident on July 17, sat in a wheelchair weeping as people stood on the podium speaking about her dead relatives.
Koopman was discharged from Victoria Hospital on Tuesday and is still recovering while her son Jordan, two, who was discharged last week has fully recovered.
Koopman’s boyfriend, Warren Sam, 28, said she was not coping with the loss of her stepfather and siblings: “She is not okay emotionally and she still doesn’t want to talk about what happened on the day of the incident.”
Her uncle, James Adams, said Koopman’s mother, Deborah Manuel, was slowly recovering.
Adams said doctors would not allow Deborah to attend the funeral fearing it might slow her recovery.
“We only told her about the death of her husband and two children yesterday (Wednesday) and she didn’t take it well,” he said.
Adams had been liaising with the detective leading the investigation.
“The family is not happy with how the investigation is going.
“We are not updated and we fear that the case might be closed with us not knowing what happened in that house,” he said.
Sam discovered the family of six shortly after 1pm in their backyard dwelling in Diaz Street.
Haniyah Martin and her partner, Yazeed van der Merwe, who were among the first to arrive at the Manuel home, said they found Keanan and Ashley lying on the floor, Koopman, 21, on one bed and Deborah, Caitlyn and Jordan on the other.
The couple called an ambulance, and while they waited for it to arrive they carried the bodies outdoors, still trying to revive them.
The family were unresponsive when found.
Keanan and the two children could not be resuscitated and were declared dead at the scene.
An open and empty gas cylinder was found in the kitchen and a second, closed gas cylinder was found in the bedroom.
zodidi.dano@inl.co.za
Cape Argus
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