Conflicts arise in the city regarding the body count of people who died on Sunday during the Kampala mall stampede.
Mr. Richard Lutaaya, A father who lost his child in the stampede had raised a concern about the number of deaths that occurred in the Freedom City Mall, Kampala. He was told to check on the mortuary when he insisted on seeing the bodies.
He claims to have seen about 10 bodies stacked together when he entered the mortuary yesterday after a staff initially informed him there was only one body from the incident and that was a woman. Richard Lutaaya claims that he saw his son Brain as one among the ten bodies he saw in the mortuary.
Mr. Lutaaya and his wife Aisha Kantono informed that their son had returned from the Owino Market, where he used to sell secondhand clothing on New Year’s Eve. After having lunch with them, he left for Freedom City to see a show.
The fact that their son is dead in the stampede was unbelievable to the couple. They can’t accept the fact that their son is never going to return home anymore.
Lutaaya and his Wife arrived at the hospital early in the morning and started to search for their son. The search led him to the KCC mortuary after he was unable to locate him in any of the hospital’s wards. Thus they found out that their son is no more.
Lutaaya said that he was confident that he would return home because his name wasn’t there on the list of the dead. Thus he ran into various police stations around there but couldn’t get enough information. That is how he ended up in the hospital and came to the realization that his son is dead.
Yesterday, the KCC mortuary was covered with people who were in search of their lost family members and friends.
The National Resistance Movement Mobiliser in Mpigi District, Prossy Mbabazi was there in the crowd who was looking for her friend named Christine Kyomuhendo. Her friend was from Mbarara and came to Kampala to visit her aunt.
Mbabazi claims that her friend had lost her two children in the stampede and her phone was switched off. Mbabazi was stood by her friend with her daughter’s dead bodies.
She claims that the children weren’t supposed to be in the mall till midnight. She added that if they had returned before midnight, the death shouldn’t have happened.
According to a source close to the KCCA mortuary, there might be nine unclaimed bodies. The majority of the bodies were transported to the KCC mortuary on Sunday morning. Several bodies were collected by their families on Sunday.
The police spokesperson Mr. Fred Enanga told the reporters that 10 persons had passed away, and eight of them had been given names. Two unidentifiable bodies were left in the mortuary, according to Enanga.
However, there are differences between the figures provided by the police and those provided by the family of the dead. Only one child was shown on the list made by the police in several cases where parents lost two kids.
Mr. Gabriel and his wife Prossy Namulindwa lost their two children during the stampede. One of the two children wasn’t on the list of dead created by the police.
A woman who was 30 years old was listed as a 14-year-old girl in the list that featured the dead. The KCCA mortuary wasn’t ready to reveal the exact number of deaths and thus conflicts over the dead arose in the city.
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The Mulago Hospital where the people died and were injured in the stampede was supposedly taken, claims that no survivors of the Freedom City stampede were being treated there. They said that the victims who survived the incident might have been taken by their families to other nearby hospitals.
On New Year’s Eve, people rushed into the Freedom City Mall in Kampala to celebrate the new year. This is when the stampede occurred in the mall which led to the death of about ten people. According to the reports, the stampede happened when people rushed outside the mall to see the fireworks.
This incident caused the instant death of five people and injured several people. Some of the critically injured later died. One of the saddest parts of the stampede deaths was that most of the dead were juveniles.
According to the list made by police, the dead includes, Mary Namyalo, Shafik Mwanje, Ibrahim Kizito, Margaret Nakatumba, Viola Nakanwagi, Daniel Kibuuka, Hadijja Nakamati, Nakakande Hadijja, and two unidentified bodies. One of the unidentified bodies is a juvenile 16 years old.
It is not the first time that Uganda has witnessed a stampede, there was another Stampede in Kampala in 2009. It occurred in the Kansanga amusement park in Kampala, where one person died and three were injured.
Comparatively, the Freedom City Mall Stampede is the incident in which more than ten people lost their lives. We can’t be sure about the number of people who died, because the dead body count is still under dispute.
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