A three-year-old girl died and her friend was hospitalized after a weekend sleepover in Scarborough.
Now investigators are trying to determine if it was the breakfast cereal the tots ate that caused them to become sick Sunday morning.
“She was healthy, happy and dancing on Saturday, then the next day she’s gone,” heartbroken mom Maurine Mirembe told the Toronto Sun on Wednesday.
She and her daughter, Bernice Nantanda Wamala, lived together in an apartment on Birchmount Rd., south of St. Clair Ave. E., and she agreed to let the toddler spend Saturday night at her friend’s apartment in the same building.
“They are best friends,” Mirembe said, explaining her daughter was born soon after she immigrated to Canada from Uganda and the two girls had known each other their whole lives.
The girls woke up Sunday morning and enjoyed their breakfast.
Soon after, Mirembe said she spoke to other girl’s mom on the phone and was told her daughter was lethargic, she had vomited and soiled herself.
“I knew right away something was really wrong,” she said.
Mirembe had the other mother call 911 while she ran back to her apartment to change her daughter’s clothes. She said she watched out her apartment window, ready to run outside, but no ambulance pulled up.
She returned to the other mom’s apartment and ended up on the phone with a Telehealth Ontario nurse.
“When you call 911, you don’t expect questions, you just want an ambulance,” she said, adding her child had severe stomach pain, laboured breathing, and was suffering seizures.
But Mirembe claims the nurse advised her to take her daughter on her own to either Sick Kids or Michael Garron Hospital.
A friend drove them to Michael Garron because it was closer. It took 17 minutes to get to the hospital at Coxwell and Mortimer Aves.
Having never been there before, she rushed in through the main entrance with Bernice in her arms only to be told she needed to go to the emergency department. So she carried her child through the hospital to the emergency department.
Once there, Mirembe said she was told to have a seat with her daughter in the waiting area.
She recalls her daughter’s fingers, toes, and lips were grey, she was having repeated seizures and was drifting in and out of consciousness.
A friend finally pleaded with a paramedic in the hall: “She’s dying, please help!”
Bernice was brought in to a doctor and there was some discussion about transferring her to Sick Kids.
By about 1:15 p.m. the little girl was taken off life-support.
Bernice’s best friend, meanwhile, had also become ill and was taken to Sick Kids where she remained Wednesday.
“I think if an ambulance was sent, the paramedics would have taken my daughter to Sick Kids and she would have had a better chance at surviving,” Mirembe maintains.
Michael Garron Hospital did not immediately offer a statement. And Toronto Paramedic Services did not respond to the Toronto Sun’s request for comment.
Mirembe said Bernice was kind, compassionate and “loved dancing and singing.”
She hopes to lay her little girl to rest in Uganda and has started a GoFundMe to raise the money needed to cover the cost.
“There are so many questions and so few answers,” Mirembe writes on GoFundMe. “This may not fix what’s forever broken inside of me, but it will be a start for me to get closure, until I can find out what happened to my baby.”
INVESTIGATORS EYEING CEREAL
Tests are being conducted to determine if a breakfast cereal caused the mysterious death of one three-year-old and sickened another in Scarborough.
In the wake of Bernice Nantanda Wamala’s death, Toronto Police visited her apartment and her best friend’s unit trying to determine what the best friends may have ingested.
“They were asking what the girls had eaten,” grieving mom Maurine Mirembe said Wednesday, adding investigators gathered samples of the cereal the girls had eaten for breakfast Sunday after their sleepover.
Dr. Richard Wells, regional supervising coroner — Toronto West, confirmed the Office of the Chief Coroner is investigating the tot’s death but at this point, he could only say “the investigation is ongoing.”
Another go fund me page to support a blind boy.
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