MBOMBELA – The sudden, unexpected death of 48-year-old Mr Charles Davis at The Jock Pub & Grill on Saturday night shocked fellow patrons.
It was between 19:00 and 20:00 and the popular venue’s patrons had just started to arrive as a local band was scheduled to perform. Manager, Mr Morgan Jenkins, recalled that the pub was still relatively empty when he was alerted that a man had fallen down a flight of stairs and was in need of emergency medical assistance.
Band member, Mr Sakkie Tait, saw what had happened. “The gentleman was at the top of the stairs, walking from the male restrooms and the indoor bar. He seemed to have lost his balance before falling from the top, two steps down, to the concrete floor,” he said. Davis reportedly hit the floor with the back of his head, neck and the right side of his jaw.
A family member claimed that a post-mortem had been performed on Davis at a funeral parlour yesterday morning. She stated that he had suffered a heart attack shortly just before the fall. This supposedly caused him to lose his balance and fall backwards to the ground.
According to the family member, the heart attack was the cause of death and not the fall.
Patrons noticed what had happened and rushed to assist Davis. According to Jenkins, he was put in the so-called recovery position. “He was breathing faintly and had a very weak pulse. We are trained in first aid and performed CPR on him. The ambulance was alerted. We did not call the police as there had clearly been no strange incident, but rather an accident,” the manager said.
Netcare 911 arrived and took over. After 45 minutes of resuscitation attempts, Davis was declared dead.
Some patrons and even staff members of Jock expressed their dissatisfaction with how Davis’ death was handled. Jenkins and his crew merely blocked off the area with barriers before proceeding to mop up some blood. Other than this, it seems to have been business as usual.
When questioned about the procedure that followed after the incident, Jenkins said that he had reacted in accordance with his judgement at that time. “After it happened, we cancelled the band’s performance for the evening. It would have been inappropriate to host entertainment following such a tragedy. As it had happened early in the evening, I made the judgement call not to close for the remainder of the night. There were not many people present at the time and we did not want to cause more of a stir,” he reasoned. Jenkins expressed his sympathy towards Davis’ family and friends.
“We will keep them in our thoughts during this trying time,” he said. Sgt Gerald Sidebe, provincial police spokesman, said that no inquest had been opened.
Shortly after the incident, Lowvelder reported:
MBOMBELA – Patrons at one of the city’s most popular pubs witnessed an 48-year-old man die just over an hour ago.
According to eyewitnesses, he had lost his balance while walking from Jock Pub and Grill’s indoor bar to the mens’ restrooms. The man lost his footing on his way down the stairs.
His head and neck had reportedly hit the concrete floor and he died on the scene.
The man’s cause of death remains to be confirmed after a post mortem report has been conducted.
