H.Q. tour for boy who hates police

Press, 1 December 1988, Page 1

H.Q. tour for boy who hates police

By

JANE DUNBAR

A four-year-old Christchurch boy who “hates” the police because he thinks they burnt his sister will be shown round the central city police station with his mother today. “Jason' wanders about the house mumbling, ‘The police burnt my Kirsty’,” said his mother, Mrs Heather Wilcock. Mrs Wilcock has lost two children through cot deaths. One was a five-month-old daughter, Kiley, who died five years ago, and the other was Kirsty, aged nine weeks, who died six weeks ago. “Jason loved Kirsty a lot,” said Mrs Wilcock. He had not understood what had happened to Kiley, so his mother allowed him to see Kirsty in her coffin. “I let him put a doll in and kiss her good-bye.. But I didn’t want to take him to the crematorium,” she said. Since then Jason seemed to hate the police and think they burnt his sister, said Mrs Wilcock. It was not clear why he made the link, although a police officer did call at the house after the death. To try to change his mind, she thought she would take him to the police station to see what “nice people” the police were. Inspector Mai Griebel, the Christchurch police public relations officer, has offered to take her and Jason round the station today. Mrs Wilcock is angry that more support has not been shown for the Christchurch cot-death appeal.

Most people had no idea what it was like to lose a child, and so did nothing to help with the cotdeath problem, she said. Yet there had been nearly 30 cot deaths in Christchurch already this year, and something had to be done. She said both her children had been perfectly healthy, and she had checked them 30 minutes before they died. With Kiley it

was- 11 a.m., and with Kirsty 10.30 a.m. She had not bothered having a monitor when Kirsty was alive because people had said it was unlikely there would be two cot deaths in the same family. Mrs Wilcock, who has two sons, plans to have other children and says she will insist on having a monitor until the child is at least a year old.