BADFONTEIN – The remains of little Rina Mosotho (3) were found yesterday (Saturday) night after she had been missing for than three weeks.
A herder found parts of her skeleton on a mountain cliff, one of many in the area.
Little Rina was visiting relatives when she mysteriously disappeared while playing with other children at the homestead on the farm Spoelklippies near Verlorenkloof.
According to Capt Pottie Potgieter, one of the officers involved in the search and rescue operation the toddler and some of the other children left their grandfather’s house to go and play at another relative’s house several hundred metres away. “When the other children told Rina that they were going back to the grandfather’s house as it was almost supper time, she did not want to accompany them and stayed behind.
When supper was about to be served, her grandfather started to look for her. It was then that the children told him that Rina had stayed behind.”
The grandfather apparently immediately sent them to go and find her. When they returned without her, he himself went in search of her.
“When he couldn’t find her, he waited for the other family members to return from the fields. Nobody, however, had seen Rina since the children had left her at the other homestead. By that time, she had already been missing for several hours.
Potgieter and his team searched relentlessly for the little girl, but in vain. The help of an SAPS helicopter was also called in in the hope that she would be found alive.
According to Potgieter the location where her remains were discovered very far from the house where the kids were playing.
Her remains will be sent for a post-mortem to gain more insight into the cause of death and hopefully shed more light on the circumstances surrounding her disappearance.
