'Senat is a menace'

AIDS patient Nicholas Senat is becoming a menace to the Lae public, The National reports.

He has been threatening students, commuters and the public with a syringe.

The Morobe provincial AIDS committee last night asked the police to step in and arrest him.

PAC coordinator Charles Pepe said Mr Senat should not be threatening the public.

“He should be taken into custody and sent home,” Mr Pepe said.

He said Mr Senat’s behaviour was placing the lives of other people at risk.

Mr Pepe said under the HIV/AIDS Management Act, people who knowingly transmit the virus could be charged with a criminal offence.

He urged relatives to meet with the PAC to discuss ways to care for him.

“We can send him to Siassi but who is going to look after him?” Mr Pepe asked.

Mr Senat’s parents are in Port Moresby.

In January, the PAC had paid boat fares for both Mr Senat and an escort to Siassi Island to his Omom village, where his medication would be sent.

But Mr Senat returned to Lae in February.

At the beginning of this month, he began threatening people.

Last Saturday afternoon, he walked into the Foodmart Supermarket around 5pm and started eating the food he collected before paying for it.

On Monday, he walked into the Amba Demonstration School’s elementary section at Ampo and chased all the pupils out, threatening “to inject them with AIDS”.

The next day, he confronted an upper primary pupil from the school and tried to grab him but was shrugged off.

On a PMV bus from Balob to China town on Tuesday, commuters ran out of the bus at China town and fled for their lives urging the driver and conductor to “take him to the police”.

At Eriku yesterday morning, he swore at people who stared at him.

He pointed to a group of about 50 men, women and children and shouted: “You call me AIDS man. Ten of you have AIDS.”