DOCTORS assessing former Blue Bulls flanker Phindile Ntshongwana for mental illness had failed his family, the Durban High Court heard yesterday.
“I feel the doctors let us down. I was with them on a number of occasions crying out about my son’s condition,” Nomafa Letlaka testified.
The court was trying to determine whether Ntshongwana, who was in court, was fit to stand trial. He has been charged in connection with the deaths of four people in Durban and also faces two charges of attempted murder, one of kidnapping and one of rape.
Letlaka told the court her son had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and a bipolar condition in December 2009 at Durban’s RK Khan Hospital.
“After he was discharged, I noticed that he was not the same person,” she told the court.
He would lock himself in his room and told her that people were following him and wanted to kill him.
One evening, Letlaka had a puncture and called her son, but he said he was too scared to help her.
Letlaka told the court she called the Montclair police and ask them to persuade him to be taken for an assessment at a hospital.
He was admitted to RK Khan Hospital in July 2010, but doctors told her he was not responding to treatment. When he was being transferred to St George’s hospital, he got out of the ambulance and went to stay with a friend. He later went to his aunt in Cape Town and, after his mother intervened, he was admitted to Valkenberg Psychiatric Hospital.
Back home towards the end of 2010, he continued locking himself in his room.
Letlaka described her son as a religious man, but she was concerned when she found him reading the Bible in his study at 5am.
She said his strange behaviour continued. He was readmitted to St George’s hospital on December 23, 2010 and discharged on January 3, 2011.
“I told the doctors I was not able to supervise his treatment because he was locking himself in his room. Still, he was not admitted to hospital for a long period.”
She said that when the police searched Ntshongwana’s room, they found tablets on his table which indicated he had not been taking his medication.
The trial continues. – Sapa