MONROVIA,
Liberia — A man who flew to Dallas and was later found to have the
Ebola virus was identified by senior Liberian government officials on
Wednesday as Thomas Eric Duncan, a resident of Monrovia in his mid-40s.
Mr.
Duncan, the first person to develop symptoms outside Africa during the
current epidemic, had direct contact with a woman stricken by Ebola on
Sept. 15, just four days before he left Liberia for the United States,
the woman’s parents and Mr. Duncan’s neighbors said.
In
a pattern often seen here in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, the family
of the woman, Marthalene Williams, 19, took her by taxi to a hospital
with Mr. Duncan’s help on Sept. 15 after failing to get an ambulance,
said her parents, Emmanuel and Amie Williams. She was convulsing and
seven months pregnant, they said.
Turned
away from a hospital for lack of space in its Ebola treatment ward, the
family said it took Ms. Williams back home in the evening, and that she
died hours later, around 3 a.m.
Mr.
Duncan, who was a family friend and also a tenant in a house owned by
the Williams family, rode in the taxi in the front passenger seat while
Ms. Williams, her father and her brother, Sonny Boy, shared the back
seat, her parents said. Mr. Duncan then helped carry Ms. Williams, who
was no longer able to walk, back to the family home that evening,
neighbors said.
“He
was holding her by the legs, the pa was holding her arms and Sonny Boy
was holding her back,” said Arren Seyou, 31, who witnessed the scene and
occupies the room next to Mr. Duncan’s.
Sonny
Boy, 21, also started getting sick about a week ago, his family said,
around the same time that Mr. Duncan first started showing symptoms.
In
a sign of how furiously the disease can spread, an ambulance had come
to their house on Wednesday to pick up Sonny Boy. Another ambulance
picked up a woman and her daughter from the same area, and a team of
body collectors came to retrieve the body of yet another woman — all
four appeared to have been infected in a chain reaction started by
Marthalene Williams.
A few minutes after the ambulance left, the parents got a call telling them that Sonny Boy had died on the way to the hospital.
Mr.
Duncan had lived in the neighborhood, called 72nd SKD Boulevard, for
the past two years, living by himself in a small room that he rented
from the Williams couple. He had told that them and his neighbors that
his son lived in the United States, played baseball, and was trying to
get him to come to America.
For
the past year, Mr. Duncan had worked as a driver at Safeway Cargo, the
Liberian customs clearance agent for FedEx, said Henry Brunson, the
company’s manager.
In
an office with a large FedEx sign outside the building in downtown
Monrovia, Mr. Brunson said that Mr. Duncan quit abruptly on Sept. 4,
giving no reason. But Mr. Brunson said he knew that Mr. Duncan had
family members in the United States as well.
“His
sister came from the United States and he asked for a day off so that
he could go meet her at the Mamba Point Hotel,” Mr. Brunson said,
mentioning a hotel popular among foreigners. “He quit a few weeks after
that.”
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