POLICE are looking for friends or family to come forward and identify the woman, believed to be in her 30s, who was brutally murdered and dumped in the park on Edith Benson Crescent on Saturday.
According to Berea SAPS communications officer, Captain PN Naidoo, a passerby discovered the head of a person while walking at the park around 10.30am on Saturday morning.
“The traumatised witness ran to the Berea Police station to alert police and our officers rushed to the scene. Officers found the head of a woman lying on the path and the rest of her body behind a tree close by. The woman’s body had been mutilated,” Naidoo said.
A witness, Fikiseni “Lucky” Malembe, told Berea Mail it was, “the first time I’ve seen something like that in my life.”
“I was walking to the park to leave my blankets there as I normally do before I start collecting paper and cardboard to sell. I was walking up the bank when I saw the head. I got a shock and just stood there but when I saw a jogger passing on Botanic Gardens Road, I told him. He also saw her and her body which was behind the tree,” Malembe explained.
Violence analyst and monitor for KZN, Mary de Haas believes the motive for the senseless killing, could be a muti-killing, which is a big problem in the province. “It certainly sounds like it could be a killing for medicine. Some people believe human body parts make the most powerful medicine. This idea and this type of killing needs to be severely clamped down on and condemned by leaders from all spheres, political, traditional and medical,” she said.
De Haas said police need to take any reports of missing persons seriously, and bring those responsible for such crimes to book so they know they will not get off easily.
“It is something the police should be working on with priority because it is something that happens regularly in other communities. We can only pin hope on relatives coming forward to provide DNA. The procedure should be that DNA and fingerprint samples should be taken and police need check this against missing persons files,” she said.
Berea SAPS are currently investigating the murder, however no arrests have been made at this stage.
