Zwijndrecht –
Little Sidra (4) from Zwijndrecht died in hospital on Tuesday after being in a coma for five days following a gymnastics accident at school in Burcht. This will be confirmed to our editorial staff.
Marc Klifman and Guy Stevens
Tuesday 2 April 2024 at 21:41
Her condition had been critical since Friday morning. But after five days in intensive care at the UZA in Edegem, Sidra Atmane (4) died in hospital on Tuesday, we heard from the family entourage and was confirmed by the public prosecutor’s office.
On Easter Monday it turned out that the little girl had to undergo an urgent brain scan. This already showed that there was brain damage. A day later Sidra died from the sad consequences of a gymnastics accident.
Gymnastics hall
The incident happened on Friday morning around 11 am in the gymnasium of the Sint-Martinus school in Burcht, a village in Zwijndrecht in Antwerp. With the activity “Travel around the world” the toddlers in her class were allowed to climb and play on all kinds of gym equipment. What exactly went wrong afterwards is now up to an investigating judge to further investigate. But the fact is that the girl got her head stuck between the bars of a climbing frame. “They tell us that she was suffocated,” the parents said this weekend.
The girl could still be resuscitated, but was admitted to hospital in a coma. According to their entourage, the parents are in shock and overwhelmed by grief. They never left their daughter’s sickbed for a second.
School devastated
The Sint-Martinus school in Burcht is reacting very emotionally to Sidra’s death. “This has hit us very hard,” says Geert De Corte, general director of the Catholic Schools on the Scheldt school group. “All teachers are still in the teacher’s room at school and we are trying to process it together.”
From Wednesday, social and psychological help will be provided for teachers, but also for the students of the school. “We have informed all parents in the class by telephone and some parents have already said that their child could best be assisted. This is clearly a blow to everyone.”
The school is now waiting for the results of the medical examiner’s examination. “We have yet to learn the cause of death,” says De Corte. “Because there are still a lot of questions about that. It is not yet clear how exactly this happened.”
