Tributes for Luke Wingfield, 36, after meningococcal B death

Relatives of a 36 year old man who died of meningococcal say the “beautiful person” had his first call for help rejected as he waited with bags packed ready for hospital.

South Australian Luke Wingfield (L), who died of meningococcal. Picture: Facebook

Luke Wingfield woke up with a fever in the early hours of Tuesday morning. By Wednesday night, he had died from meningococcal virus.

“It feels so unreal ... I didn’t even know that he was feeling that way because he had messaged me on Sunday,” shis sister Tania Wingfield told the Sunday Mail.

“It feels like a nightmare that I just cannot wake up from.”

Mr Wingfield, 36, returned to Adelaide after attending his best mate’s father’s funeral in Alice Springs the week before, and started feeling sick last weekend.

Ms Wingfield last night described her brother as a gentle giant.

“Luke was a very quiet, humble, gentle giant who had a lot of love and respect for everybody that crossed his path,” she said.

South Australian Luke Wingfield, who died of meningococcal Picture: Facebook

South Australian Luke Wingfield, who died of meningococcal Picture: Facebook

“You hardly heard him swear, he treated his brothers and his father like kings and he treated us sisters and our mother and nieces like queens.

“Like, wherever we would ask for things, he would support us financially and he would travel up and down from Adelaide to Port Augusta because our mother is terminally ill.”

Mr Wingfield worked at the Carapateena mines, 160 kilometres north of Port Augusta.

Ms Wingfield said cousins who were living with Mr Wingfield at his Ferryden Park home thought he had the flu and that he would bounce back. But his condition deteriorated and they called an ambulance on Tuesday morning.

“He became so unwell and family, my dad, my brother and sister were saying that he couldn’t get out of bed,” she said.

“The first time, they rang the ambulance as early as Tuesday morning and he had his bag and everything packed but the first ambulance workers refused to take him because they said that his symptoms weren’t serious.

“So the second time, he ended up collapsing to the ground and taking a seizure so they rang the ambulance a second time and that’s when they took him up to the Royal Adelaide.”

SAAS confirmed they had picked up a man from Ferryden Park and said there would be an internal investigation into the case.

Mr Wingfield was in hospital from early Tuesday morning to late Wednesday night, before his family made the hard decision to take him off of life support while he was surrounded by loved ones.

“We made the hard decision to turn the machine off, with my dad and my siblings and the rest of the family,” she said.

Mr Wingfield, a passionate Port Adelaide supporter, died from meningococcal B, just over 24 hours after waking up with a fever.

There have been 16 cases of the highly contagious meningococcal B in SA this year, but Mr Wingfield is the first to lose his life to the disease.

Family member Lee Wingfield urged other to take any symptoms seriously.

“Don’t muck around with this, it’s too dangerous,’’ he told 7News.

Luke Wingfield was also remembered by his cousin Matthew Coulthard, who wore a black armband while making his AFL debut for Richmond yesterday at the MCG.

Contract tracers have identified unspecified “multiple” people who had contact Mr Wingfield man, whose case was alerted on Wednesday, along with another case of a teenage girl, 13.

Of those 10 patients have been ordered to take “clearance” antibiotics.