News

Last of N4 bodies identified

The bodies of four people, who were burnt beyond recognition during an accident on the N4, has finally been identified.

The news comes, more than a month, after six people died, five of them burning to death in a horror accident near the Middelburg dam, on Wednesday 3 September.

Two of the deceased were identified as Pretoria couple Bernine Booysen and Ilse Jansen van Vuuren, shortly after the accident.

They traveled in a Nissan Juke. The first people on the scene managed to pull Booysen to safety. Flames kept them from getting to Van Vuuren in time.

Four occupants, who traveled in a Toyota Corolla, burnt beyond recognition. One of the people fell out of the vehicle during the accident and burnt to death in front of eyewitnesses. They were frantically trying to pull the person out of the flames with ropes, but were unsuccessful.

The family members of the occupants of the Corolla, requested DNA tests to be done, because there was no other way to positively identify their loved ones.

After waiting weeks, tests finally confirmed their identity. A bitter-sweet experience, because the relief to finally say a proper goodbye, is harshly contrasted by the fact, that the last grain of hope that it might not be them, was squashed with the news.

The remaining four people was identified as Johan Malapane (67), William Jaars (64) and Desire Meintjies (41) from Eldorado Park and Pule Nkonyana (45) from Soweto.

At Caxton, every story is written by humans. We use AI only to perform quality checks - never to generate the news. Happy reading!

Support local journalism

Add The Citizen as a preferred source to see more from Middelburg Observer in Google News and Top Stories.

Caxton Reporter

Caxton Local Media’s readership remains the highest in the communities that it serves. The group has 123 newspapers with representation in the majority of provinces across the country and over 60 community news websites.
Back to top button