Wife
sees 'dead husband' begging
15/01/2008
09:11 - (SA)
Virginia
Keppler, Beeld
Pretoria
- A woman from Lindo Park in the east of Pretoria thought she was seeing a ghost
when she saw her "dead husband", whom she buried in September last year,
begging at a shopping centre in East Lynne on Friday.
Elizabeth
Rossouw, 41, said she nearly died of fright.
Her
husband, Dawid "Mossie" Rossouw, left home about six years ago. Since
then she had seen him only once in a while.
A
family friend told her "Mossie is dead" after she had not seen him for
quite a while. "I believed it".
Wouldn't
believe it
Rossouw
and her friend, Neels Bezuidenhout, went to the Pretoria mortuary where they found
a badly decomposed body.
"I
personally identified the body and was positive that it was my husband. "
"The
police took his fingerprints and thus determined it was Mossie."
According
to a death certificate he died of double pneumonia on July 13 2007. He was buried
in Zandfontein cemetery on September 3.
Rossouw
and her son Quinton, 20, were nearly "shocked out of our shoes" when
they saw the "deceased" at a shopping centre in East Lynne.
"We
were so shocked that we didn't even talk to him. On our way home I asked Quinton
to turn back so that we could check whether we had really seen him."
They
went home and told Bezuidenhout about the incident.
"He
said: 'Bullshit, I personally helped carry his coffin and cover it with earth'."
Had
the right ID number
Bezuidenhout
said he jumped into his minibus and drove to the shopping centre to investigate.
"I asked him who he was and he wrote down Dawid Erasmus 'Mossie' Rossouw.
He also wrote down his identity number."
Bezuidenhout
and Rossouw blamed the police for not doing their job properly.
They
found out on Tuesday they had buried Jacobus Willem Dreyer. "I hope his family
read that he had a nice funeral."
Beeld
accompanied Rossouw in a search for her husband on Tuesday. He was found in East
Lynne. He had cooldrink, a bottle of wine, a blanket, a jacket and a few personal
possessions in a plastic bag with him.
Rossouw
explained to her husband that she and Bezuidenhout would pick him up on Wednesday
morning to have his fingerprints taken at the department of home affairs so that
he could be declared alive again.
Police
spokesperson captain Prince Mokhabela said the incident would be investigated.
