In his final days, Thomas Eric Duncan rebutted accusations that he knowingly carried Ebola from Liberia, telling family members he thought the pregnant woman who infected him had a miscarriage.
“If he had known he had Ebola … he would not have put the love of his life in a situation like this,” said family friend Saymendy Lloyd.
That love is Louise Troh, the woman Duncan came to Dallas to marry. As his condition deteriorated, he spoke to her about the loneliness of a quarantine ward.
In the hours after his death, his loved ones grieved in their own isolation — whether voluntary or imposed by quarantine.
Troh woke up Wednesday morning in the house she is confined to until authorities are sure she didn’t get the disease.
About 9:30 a.m., Troh’s pastor and Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins walked into the living room and told her that Duncan had died less than two hours earlier at Texas Health Presbyterian of Dallas. The doctors’ last-ditch efforts and an experimental drug had not saved him.
“She reacted as almost anyone would: with great shock and horror,” said George Mason, the senior pastor at Wilshire Baptist Church.
One of Troh’s sons, 13, and two young men who are sequestered in the house were “equally stunned,” Mason said. “Their thoughts not only go to the shock and sadness of losing Mr. Duncan, but also whether this will be the course they’re likely to take next.”
Reached by phone in the morning, Troh only sobbed. Mason helped her put her grief into a statement:
“I am now dealing with the sorrow and anger that his son was not able to see him before he died,” Troh wrote. “This will take some time, but in the end, I believe in a merciful God.”
Troh gave birth to their son, Karsiah Duncan, in a West African refugee camp 19 years ago, before she parted with Duncan and moved to the United States.
At a memorial service Wednesday night at Wilshire Baptist, associate pastor Mark Wingfield said Karsiah Duncan was on his father’s mind until his death.
His last words were spoken to a nurse who asked him what he wanted.
“He said he wanted to see his son,” Wingfield said. “She asked him then where his son was. He said he was in college, where he should be. He was proud of his son.”
Karsiah Duncan, who attends Angelo State University, had tried to see his father hours before he died.
‘He was lonely’
Troh, afraid she may have the virus, has asked family and friends not to visit. She grieves by phone — the same way she last spoke to Duncan.
Duncan, 42, said his final words to his intended bride on Saturday, according to Lloyd.
“He was lonely,” Lloyd said. “He wanted family around him. He was surrounded by strangers.”
Previously, Lloyd said, Duncan apologized to Troh for bringing the virus to her doorstep.
Some authorities have accused Duncan of hiding his attempt to help to a pregnant woman dying of Ebola, just days before he left Liberia. But Duncan mistook the woman’s symptoms for a miscarriage, Lloyd said.
The clinic Duncan brought her to may have missed the symptoms too. “She did not have diarrhea, was not torn up, was not bleeding from anywhere,” Lloyd said. “The doctors took blood samples from her and told her she could go.”
The woman was buried with a standard funeral — not cremated, as Duncan’s remains will be. By the time her blood tests revealed Ebola, Duncan was hospitalized in Dallas, Lloyd said.
‘A face to this’
Duncan’s other loved ones are scattered around two continents.
Much of his family remains in Liberia. His mother and sister, who drove to Dallas from North Carolina on Tuesday, could not be reached for comment. Earlier, his mother, Nowai Korkoya, of her son: “My whole thinking is on you.”
His relatives are a small minority among those who marked his death.
“If Eric Duncan had not gotten on that plane and come to the United States, to most of us he would have been another nameless person who died of Ebola in Liberia,” said Mark Wingfield, an associate pastor at Troh’s church.
“Because he got on the plane, we know him and have a face to this. Perhaps one good thing to come out of this is we in Dallas and beyond — hopefully — will have more sensitivity and concern about this critical issue.”
Staff writers Dianne Solís and Claire Z. Cardona contributed to this report.
