Ashya King ‘so happy’ to be reunited with parents in Spain
The parents of brain cancer patient Ashya King describes their son’s joy after being reunited with his family in a Spanish hospital.
Brett and Naghmeh King saw the five-year-old yesterday for the first time since they were arrested on Saturday, having fled from Southampton General Hospital in search of treatment.
Mr King said Ashya was “so happy” and “so pleased to see us”.
Leaving through a back door of the Materno-Infantil hospital with his older son Danny, Mr King said: “He couldn’t breathe he was so happy.
“He was so pleased to see us. We’re trying to be hopeful.”
He added: “Tomorrow I meet with the cancer specialist. We’ll do what it takes. Not much else to do.”
A Materno-Infantil spokeswoman, where the patient is staying, said local authorities had received notification from British officials that the parents should not be allowed to take the boy away after reports suggested that the Kings would not be permitted to remove the child from the premises.
The reunion went ahead despite fears on the part of Ashya’s father Brett that a court order in England might prevent it. Arriving at the hospital yesterday, he told Channel 4 News reporter Alex Thomson that he planned to see his son, even if it meant being arrested.
‘Common sense’
Prime Minister David Cameron said it appeared that “common sense” had now prevailed, with Ashya’s reunion with his parents.
Mr Cameron told ITV1’s Good Morning Britain: “I think above all the lesson is that while we always have to act in support of defending and protecting the rights and interests of the child – and that is what Hampshire Police, and indeed those in the hospital, believed they were doing – we also have to make sure when we make these judgments – and it wasn’t Government, of course, it was police who are independent – we need a healthy dose of common sense.
I think in the end common sense won out…but it is tragic they were separated. David Cameron
“Having had a disabled child often in hospital being fed through a tube, those pictures absolutely meant so much to me, because the thought of having your much loved boy separated from you for all those hours and days, I can’t think of anything more painful for a parent.”