LAS VEGAS (KVVU) – A family is mourning the loss of a husband and father after he died from COVID-19.
“He was only 39; our babies now don’t have a dad,” Jessica DuPreez said through tears. “You can’t say, ‘I’m young, and it won’t affect me.’ Because it will.”
Just two weeks ago, DuPreez said life was great. She was on vacation in San Diego with her fiancé Michael Freedy, known as “Big Mike” at the M Resort where he worked, and their five kids, ages 17, 10, 7, 6, and 17 months.
“We went out to the beach. We didn’t put on sunblock, so everyone got really sunburnt,” she said. “Dad (Freedy) really got sunburnt.”
His sunburn was so bad, he went to the ER when back in Vegas. A COVID test at the hospital came back positive, but he went home to try and fight it out in isolation.
“The machine started going crazy; his pulse was gone.”
“Early Tuesday morning, I would say around 3,4 o’clock in the morning, he wakes me up panicking,” DuPreez said. “He’s like, ‘I can’t breathe. I know something is wrong.’”
She said he could not even stand when he tried, so they went back to a hospital.
He was admitted with pneumonia in both lungs and eventually transferred to another hospital where she was allowed to see him.
“I just kept telling him, ‘You are going to get through this; you’ve got to come home to us,’” she said.
Days later, things took a turn for the worse and Freedy was transferred to the ICU.
“I was able to call before they took him in, and he sat on the phone,” DuPreez said. “And I was able to hear him. I was like, ‘Please keep fighting. Don’t give up.’ And he’s like, ‘I’m trying to fight, but they are going to intubate me and put me under.’”
She got to go in and see him.
“The machine started going crazy; his pulse was gone,” she said … READ MORE.
