Princess Cooper, a 25-year-old lady, died inexplicably in early March of this year on the premises of the FAWAZ Building Material Store, which is managed by a group of foreign nationals, just over three months ago.
The mother hasn’t been able to relax since then. According to the mother, Fatu, she is appealing with the authorities to release her daughter’s remains so that it can be buried.
Madam Flower sobbed as she told the media that she had been heartbroken ever since her daughter inexplicably passed away and that there had been no justice because her daughter’s body had been in the mortuary for so long with no indication of it.
Princess Cooper, 25, was discovered on March 24, 2022, in the grounds of the FAWAZ Building Material Store, next to the ELWA Junction in Paynesville, dead in a pool of blood with blood pouring from her lips and nose. Numerous demonstrations by neighborhood organizations calling for justice for her untimely murder have taken place since then.
The plea for an autopsy was heard by the Liberia National Police (LNP), the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), and the Liberian government (GOL).
The cause of Princess’s demise was determined to be hemorrhagic shock, a type of hypovolemic shock in which intravascular blood loss and subsequent changes in the cell as a result of hypoxia cause tissue and organ dysfunction, which eventually results in death once a certain threshold level is reached.
A ruptured Rasmussen aneurysm, bronchial artery erosion, and progressive secondary pulmonary tuberculosis were among the other causes of death cited in the autopsy report at the time by Dr. Kolee and his colleague, Dr. Zoebon B. Kpadeh.
Massive hemoptysis, a potentially fatal condition that involves bleeding from the pulmonary or bronchial vasculature and is often brought on by increased pressure in the bronchial system, can be brought on by a Rasmussen’s aneurysm. Mortality rates are close to 70% in situations when bronchial artery embolization has not yet been performed.
The pathologists declared that “in our professional and expert judgment, the cause of death is natural.”
President George Manneh Weah intervened and ordered the family to locate an impartial pathologist who would do a second, impartial autopsy to determine the cause of the death. This came about after the deceased’s family requested a second autopsy and opposed to the government’s autopsy report, claiming that their daughter had no prior history of TB and that the government’s findings were unfair.
But since then, there hasn’t been an autopsy. According to the family, security worries prevented their choice pathologist from traveling to Liberia. The president’s offer to personally fund a second autopsy was thus declined by the group.
The government’s refusal to hand over the body of their deceased family member has been criticized by the family as unfair and wrong. They demand immediate access to their daughter’s body from the Liberian authorities so they can bury her.
They do not want their daughter’s remains to undergo a second autopsy. Instead, they desire that Princess Cooper’s remains be interred as soon as possible so that she may rest in peace and the family may cease sobbing. The family recently expressed their belief that the Liberian justice system is unfair and unjust to the media during a news conference.
Fatu O. Flowers, the mother of the dead, has once more spoken out while sobbing, appealing with the government to allow her daughter’s body to be buried. She tragically lost her daughter, and now she is beseeching for the burial of her child’s body in another tragic way.
Turning Princess’ body over for burial would only cause her family additional suffering.
