‘Dad died alone in hospital with Covid - Boris Johnson must go’

Majella Heatley Calder from Lurgan lost her father to Covid on January 9 last year and says Boris Johnson “should be sacked” for his conduct in relation to lockdown parties.

Danny Heatley, 68, took ill a few days after Boxing Day 2020 and was admitted to hospital a week later.

“We were told three days later that he was not going to get a ventilator or be resuscitated and he died on 9 January,” Majella told the News Letter.

Mr Heatley had slight COPD but didn’t use oxygen, just an occasional inhaler.

However he was very active and loved walking around Lurgan - where he was a well known personality.

“He was a father of four, grandfather of eight and a great grandfather, with two more more that arrived this year that he never got to see - so yes it makes me very angry” she said of the conduct of the Prime Minister.

“He loved life, he was a great man. He loved socialising, he loved getting out and about. You would hardly meet someone in Lurgan who didn’t know him. He talked to everybody.”

Mr Heatley was a retired car spraying mechanic but was always helping people with cars, she said.

“It is disgraceful,” she said of the Prime Minister. “Somebody in a normal working environment would have been sacked for less. These people who are supposed to be holding a position of power and showing integrity have shown absolutely nothing but contempt for the people that they are supposed to be serving. He put those rules in place.”

She is not impressed with his justification of, “I wasn’t sure what was happening” as she puts it.

“Either he knew it was happening and didn’t care or he is not aware of what is going on in his own surroundings in which case he should question if he is a decent leader? Because he is not.

“He should be sacked. At this stage he has had too many opportunities to bow out gracefully. He should be removed.”

She suspects other senior politicians are also hiding similar issues.

“Their sorrys are irrelevant to the hundreds of thousands of people who lost family, the women who gave birth alone and the women who were told that their children had died in miscarriages while they were sitting in rooms by themselves. It is pathetic.

“My daddy would probably have had one of the biggest funerals this town had ever seen. But instead there were 25 people standing outside the chapel - we weren’t even allowed inside. We had to tell people they weren’t allowed to come.”

His coffin was taken from them at the doors of the crematorium and they had to watch the rest of the ceremony on CCTV.

“And all this while other people drank and partied and patted each other on the back. It is not just my family that is affected, other families will never ever get over these things either.”

She was able to see her father for a few minutes only the day he died. Then her sister had “the horror” of getting a phone call to say, “Your daddy is dying - is there anything you want to say to him?”. So her sister spoke by phone to her father while he lay unconscious in his final minutes.

“The nurses in the hospital were doing their very best for my dad. I know they were on their knees in terms of the pressure they were under.”

She adds that the government’s conduct shows “contempt” for the nursing staff that she so admires.

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