Elderly crime victim shows improvement
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Durban - The elderly South Coast woman who was beaten up by a gang that ransacked her house and left her for dead was taken off oxygen and started breathing on her own on Thursday.
Martha Lotter, 89, was discovered by her daughter Pam Botha, 69, at her Oslo Beach home, south of Port Shepstone, on Wednesday.
She was lying next to her bed and struggling to breathe after being struck on the head in the living room and dragged to her bedroom, where she was beaten further and robbed.
Botha had gone to her mother’s house at 7am to drop off milk and make her breakfast.
But she discovered the house ransacked and found Lotter struggling to move.
Botha said her mother was showing signs of improvement.
“She is very strong. Her lungs were not working after the attack but now she’s breathing,” she said.
Her mother is in Margate Hospital’s intensive care unit.
Botha said she informed her family in Australia and her younger sister, Marie Withers, of Joburg, came to Durban immediately.
“Doctors have taken her off morphine and did tests on her. I went to visit her yesterday morning and she became emotional when she saw me. I got her some water when she touched her throat,” she said.
Botha said she was finalising arrangements for her mother to move to a home for the aged.
The Mercury