Dr Peter Beale in Court, Paediatrician Charged for Murder of Patient Aged 10

• A Johannesburg paediatric surgeon, Professor Dr Peter Beale, stands accused of fraud and murder charges
• The charges follow an incident where a 10-year-old boy died in the ICU shortly after Beale operated on him
• What was meant to be a relatively short routine procedure turned into a four-hour operation that left the boy with a collapsed lung before he passed away

JOHANNESBURG - Professor Dr Peter Beale, a paediatric surgeon from Johannesburg, is accused of murdering a patient, aged 10, during a surgery he performed. Beale is in court today (1 February) on charges of murder and fraud.

The 10-year-old patient was Zayyaan Sayed and he died after a laparoscopic operation in October 2019 at Park Lane Clinic. The purpose of the surgery was to fix reflux issues that Sayed had been suffering from.

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According to News24, Beale was originally accused along with a colleague, Dr Abdulhay Munshi, who worked as an anaesthetist. Dr Munshi was murdered in September 2020, meaning that Beale will face prosecution alone.

Details of the case

The operation which Beale and Munshi conducted on Sayed was meant to be routine surgery that should have taken one and half hours at the most. They were in the operating room for four hours, which caused Sayed's family to become concerned, IOL reports.

After the surgery, Sayed was taken to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) due to a collapsed lung. The boy died in the ICU shortly after being moved there. Munshi and Beale were subsequently charged with culpable homicide and suspended from Park Lane Clinic. Beale had previously been suspended by Netcare.

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South Africans react to Beale's trial

@SamAndCoTrading asked:

"Will the neglect at government hospitals that results in the death of numerous patients be investigated too? Some of those nurses don't care at all and the conditions are disgusting."

@ZenandeNGC remarked:

"This story is so bizarre."

@RothsteinCam said:

"I wonder what these doctors did wrong. Even the father went after the other doctor, it seems."

@refilwemk asked:

"What’s a 73-year-old doing performing surgery?"

@Deemolefe believes:

"This reads like a film script."

SA questions who could have murdered a granny and her grandkid

In other news about murder, Briefly News reported that the South African Police Service in the North West were called to investigate the gruesome killing of a grandmother and her grandchild in a township near Delareyville.

The woman was is said to have been found with multiple stab wounds while the little girl, aged 5, was drowned in a bucket.

The grandmother was 61-year-old Mmatiro Clementine Dithato and the incident took place on Saturday, 29 January, 2021.

Source: Briefly News