Elena Walsh could not wait to go on a family holiday to celebrate her impending retirement and her son’s engagement. On August 1 last year, she flew to Cape Verde in west Africa on a £5,000 Tui package holiday with her husband Patrick, their son Sean and their future daughter-in-law Gemma. But shortly after arriving, Walsh, 64, contracted a stomach bug. Within days, she was dead. The pain in her stomach had become so bad that she was taken to hospital, where local doctors thought she had appendicitis and attempted to remove her healthy organ. Her husband, who was waiting outside the operating theatre, heard her “crying out in pain”. “The last words she shouted was ‘you’re hurting me, you’re hurting me’,” Patrick, 60, said from the family home in Birmingham. “That’s the last of her.”He broke down in tears as he recalled his wife’s traumatic final moments.
Published: January 31, 2026 4:30 pm
Source: The Times — Read original