We Blame Ourselves

Grieving parents whose son died because he wasn’t in a car seat want others to learn from their tragedy

- Jacques Myburgh

HIS toy dinosaurs are lined up on a shelf in his bedroom. “This one was his favourite,” his mom, Jenny Schmidt (28), says. “You can see how the paint has come off its teeth – this dinosaur ate all the others.”

She laughs as she reminisces about her three-year-old son, Mark, who spent many happy hours playing in this room.

Today their lively little boy is no longer around and running up and down the passages of their home in KwaZuluNatal.

On Mark’s bed there’s a collection of car seats. There’s heartache and guilt in his mother’s eyes as she looks at them. “As a mom you know it’s logical to have a car seat in your vehicle, you know you have to fasten your child’s safety belt, but you don’t always do it and when it’s too late, you’re sorry,” she says.

On 27 May their world was turned upside down when Mark and his older sister, Zané (9), were involved in a horrific car crash. Mark wasn’t in a car seat, nor was he wearing a seatbelt, so he was flung from the vehicle and died later that afternoon in hospital.

“As a dad you battle with those guilty feelings all the time,” Marius (32) says.

He and Jenny run an internet café in Richards Bay.

“You’re thinking all the time, ‘If only I’d reprimanded him once more.’ Mark would often stand on the back seat in the car. I told him off about it a lot but you tend to think you hadn’t done enough.”

They didn’t keep car seats in their vehicles before but after going through so much pain and grief they now want to raise awareness about the importance of these seats, and also collect seats to donate to parents who can’t afford them.  To date they’ve collected more than 20.