Loo collapse nearly kills man
04/09/2007 09:12 - (SA)

Buks Viljoen, Beeld

Witbank - A mineworker is in a serious condition in Pretoria Academic Hospital after a toilet collapsed while he was sitting on it.

Koos de Beer, 29, suffered deep cuts to his right leg after the toilet bowl in his rented home broke into pieces underneath him.

To make matters worse, the incident happened on Thursday, his birthday.

He suffered cuts to his leg and buttocks when sharp pieces of the broken toilet bowl cut into his lower body.

He underwent emergency surgery on Friday. He has since undergone a second operation to suture the deep wounds to his right leg, and to have skin grafts, said his sister-in-law, Reinette de Beer.

Lying in a pool of blood

She said her sister, Antoinette, 30, was hysterical when she phoned her at about midnight to say Koos "had fallen".

"When I arrived, he was lying in a pool of blood in the toilet. I desperately tried to stop the blood pumping from the wound."

After trying three times to get hold of an ambulance, she and her sister-in-law put him into the back of her bakkie and rushed him to hospital.

"The sharp shards of the toilet severed the artery in his leg and he received several units of blood," said Reinette de Beer.

De Beer was transferred to Pretoria Academic Hospital.

"He is still weak and we don't know if he will regain the use of his leg," she said.

The couple have a five-year-old son, Jacques.

"He was severely traumatised by seeing his father in such a state," she said.

She said they were dumbfounded by the incident and didn't know what had caused the toilet bowl to break.