Portsmouth widow whose husband died with Covid 'angry' and calls for resignation of PM amid Sue Gray report findings
Heartbroken 46-year-old Sarah Merrix and her daughter Ellie-Mai, from North End, were left alone to grieve amid the first lockdown in 2020 after beloved Dom Merrix died in April at the age of just 48.
As reported, the Pompey fan had been fighting Covid for two weeks when he began to struggle to breathe in his home. Paramedics were called but Dom tragically died of a heart attack in the ambulance before reaching QA Hospital.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdHis cause of death was registered as acute bleeding in his lungs due to a lung injury, which was primarily caused by Covid.
Now his partner has hit out at Boris Johnson and others who were revealed to have 16 social gatherings between May 2020 and April 2021, as found in the Sue Gray report.
Speaking to The News, Sarah said: ‘I am so angry, it’s disgusting.
‘My daughter was 10 at the time, she lost her dad and she couldn’t even cuddle her grandad or nan because of the restrictions. We couldn’t have anyone with us.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad‘We could only have around 10 people at the funeral. We did the best we could but we couldn’t have all the people we wanted there. We had to deal with the grief on our own.
‘I can’t watch the news any more because they are liars.’
Holding back tears, she added: ‘It’s still so raw. We are two years down the line but we still haven’t grieved properly. We still haven’t been able to see all of Dom’s family because some are up in Lincoln and everyone’s trying to keep everyone safe.
‘At the time they were having cheese and wine we were on our own. The first Christmas without Dom we had booked a cottage in Lincoln so we could see his family but government changed the lockdown rules again so we cancelled it. We had to spend that Christmas with just the two of us. It was the first Christmas we’d had like that.
‘I would call on him to resign. You can’t give a set of rules to the country and not follow them yourself – especially when more than 150,000 people have died.’
Dom’s funeral was held on April 27, 2020.
A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron
Subscribe here for unlimited access to all our coverage, including Pompey, for just 26p a day.
Comment Guidelines
National World encourages reader discussion on our stories. User feedback, insights and back-and-forth exchanges add a rich layer of context to reporting. Please review our Community Guidelines before commenting.