That is the question Welma le Roux wants to ask the two homeless men accused of murdering her 47-year-old son.
His bakkie, cellphone and seven CDs were stolen from him.
Police discovered Ernest le Roux’s lifeless body in the water of the Kleinfontein Dam, on Tuesday morning (September 23).
His mother told the City Times at her Farrarmere home, last week, that her son had gone missing the day before his body was discovered in the Danie Taljaard Park.
Ernest left home at 1.15pm on Monday, to feed one of his worker’s at Homestead Dam.
He had a small contract to take the rubbish bags from the dam to dump sites.
Ernest and a worker at the dam put the bags on his bakkie and dropped them at the Hospital Road (Northmead) dump site.
He then took the worker to the taxi rank, in Voortrekker Road.
“Before he left, I told him that the domestic worker, Beauty, was going to leave at 3.30pm,” said Welma.
“He phoned her at 3.15pm to ask her if she was ready to go, because he wouldn’t make it before 3.30pm.”
He told her to lock the house and leave a key for him.
When Welma returned home at 3.45pm, and saw that her son was not home, she started calling him on his cellphone.
“I started phoning – first I couldn’t even get a voice mail, no answer – nothing,” said Welma.
“From 4.14pm I phoned very 15 minutes, but I got voicemail.”
“I kept phoning till about 9pm.”
The concerned mother went to bed and was awakened in the early hours of Tuesday, by the Boksburg North SAPS, informing her that her son’s bakkie had been found in Boksburg.
The police returned for a second time that morning with the bakkie’s keys.
“I went to Homestead Dam at 10am (Tuesday) to look for the worker with who he was last seen,” said Welma.
“I couldn’t find him.
“Coming back from the dam, I found two police cars and an ambulance in front of the house, then I knew.
“They asked me if I was Ms le Roux – I said: ‘Yes – have you got bad news for me?’
“They came in and told me they had found my son’s body.”
The mother said it felt as if everything inside her died when she heard the news.
Benoni SAPS cluster spokesperson Capt Mack Mngomezulu said the deceased had been strangled and hit on the head with an iron rod.
Welma said her son became involved with the homeless in 2012, at his church (NG Kerk Benoni).
In 2012, he allowed several homeless men to camp in the garden of his home after authorities wanted to arrest them.
Welma said as far as she knew her son had no further contact with the homeless after that.
However, she believes one of them might have contacted him and lured him to Danie Taljaard Park with the purpose of robbing him.
Welma said her son was very soft-hearted and trusted people easily.
She said on Friday that her six-year-old granddaughter had not been told about her father’s death.
She added that her son loved his daughter dearly and was a model father.
“He lived for his daughter,” she said.
“He taught her to ride a two-wheel bike at the age of four.
“He spent a lot of time in the park with her – she rode the bike and he ran with her.”
Two suspects, who are facing murder charges and robbery with aggravating circumstances, appeared in the Benoni Magistrates Court on Friday for killing Farrarmere resident Ernest le Roux.
The case has been remanded to October 6.
Warning
The Benoni SAPS’s acting station commander, Col Martin van Nieuwenhuizen, has warned people to stay away from the Danie Taljaard Park, which is off Snake Road.
“People should stay away; it poses a big risk and danger because it is so isolated,” he explained.
He said people do visit the overgrown, neglected area to drink, amongst other things, but he again warned them to stay away, especially when they are alone.
Van Nieuwenhuizen said the crime rate in that area has dropped in the recent past, with arrests taking place as a result of increased policing and patrols.
