Appeal to Assist Andrew Merryweather

At around 2am on Saturday morning on the 9th September 2006, Andrew Merryweather (24) stopped at the Kwikspar at the Engen garage on the corner of Main and Protea Roads in Claremont, Cape Town. He thought he would get something to eat before going home after a night out with friends. He was attacked by 8 youths who decided he looked fair game, and deserved to be thrown against a car head first, with such force as to break two vertebrae. When they thought he was dead, they fled. A mother of some of these boys allegedly watched the incident and then drove them home without lifting a finger to assist! What makes this more of a tragedy, is that Andrew has suffered from chronic asthma since childhood and is regarded as a living miracle by doctors who treated him. To fight so hard, and then this...

While we all remain positive, the prognosis is that he must start preparing for life in a wheelchair. In the short term at least. He needs to go to Rehabilitation to assist with this life changing adaptation, which will cost around R200 000 for twelve weeks. The family does not have access to this type of money and we require your assistance. Andrew is the Manager of the restaurant at Theatre on the Bay and his mother, Joy, is a pre-primary teacher at Forres School and runs the cub packs at 6th Rondebosch and 16th Cape Town. Andrew is also a past pupil of Rondebosch Prep and High School. They are a family that has devoted many years to serving the community, and this is a wonderful opportunity to show your support by helping them.

We are in the process of setting up the Merryweather Trust to assist Andrew. This process takes time and rehabilitation needs to start immediately. In the interim, Joy Merryweather has set up a separate account for any donations.

From all involved in the support of the Andrew Merryweather Trust, we would like to express our deepest thanks to the Happy Box Team for the co-ordination of the fund-raising efforts. They supply functional hospital gifts that makes hospital a pleasure! We would also like to thank both Forres School for hosting the website free of charge and Signpost for the design and maintenance of the website free of charge.