8-year-old boy who escaped war in Afghanistan dies after falling ill at HISD elementary school

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- When the Safi family escaped war-torn Afghanistan three years ago and settled in southwest Houston, the last thing they expected was losing a child to a communicable disease.

Last week, their 8-year-old son, Zakirullah Safi, fell ill at school and died shortly after. Health officials say it was meningitis.

"It's so sad," Hijratunnah Safi, who spoke on behalf of Zakirullah's devastated parents, said. "They just give us a call from school like, 'He has a fever, headache,' we just take him to the hospital."

HISD says a child fell ill on Oct. 10. The Safi family says they took their son to the hospital from Bonham Elementary, where he was a third-grade student. He died soon after.

As the Safi family grieved, parents at Bonham Elementary told ABC13 they were largely unaware of what happened.

"It's literally so heartbreaking, I can't imagine losing my baby," Haylie Buckhan, mother of a Bonham first-grader, said.

Buckhan said she didn't find out about the meningitis case until a few days ago and is now worried that the various budget cuts at HISD are impacting the school's cleanliness.

"We don't know how many people are cleaning the schools," she said. "All I know is that teachers have been cleaning their own rooms, so I don't think the school is getting sanitized as they should. Especially with a disease like this, it should be sanitized as it was during COVID."

Buckhan says she's keeping her son away from school for 10 days as a precaution, but most other parents we talked to are not doing so.

"I hadn't noticed anything unsanitary," Alph Coleman, a father to another third-grade student, said. "It's clean, the staff and teachers are very pleasant, it's a community, as you would want it to be."

HISD says counselors are on hand for anyone who needs it, and the Houston Health Department is investigating the case.

The Safi family moved to America after working for the U.S. military during the war. They had seven kids in total, but now Zakirullah is gone.

His father told ABC13 that the boy loved the game of Cricket and playing with friends.

"It's, like, really sad. No one (thinks you could) lose a really young kid at a really young age. It's really sad," cousin Hijratunnah Safi said.

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