Headless body found in shallow grave

According to Benoni police Warrant Officer Ramothakhi Maqabe, the 27-year-old suspect was arrested on Monday after members of the public reported seeing him pushing a car containing stolen goods, Benoni City Times reported.

“The man was taken to the Etwatwa Police Station, where police members were told that there were more stolen items in the shack which he rented,” Etwatwa Police Station spokesperson Captain Pearl van Staad said.

When he was taken back to his home, he apparently jumped out of the police van and was beaten up by community members, who accused him of being a murderer and a thief.

“The landlord, who stays in the same yard as the suspect, showed police that she had found a brown jersey stained with blood and alerted them to a shallow grave behind the shack,” Van Staad added.

Police continued to search the shack and the area around it and found blood inside the building, a bloody jersey, a panga on the roof, and a carpet covered in blood.

“The body in the grave did not seem to have any inflicted wounds, and the head of the man has not been found,” said Van Staad.

She added a missing person case has been opened, and police investigations were still under way. A case of murder has been opened against the man, and he is expected to appear in the Daveyton Magistrates’ Court soon.

Last month, Gauteng police appealed to the public to help identify the body of a man whose headless body was found near the Etwatwa off-ramp on the N12 in December. The victim also had no hands and feet.

In January, postmortem results showed that a six-year-old boy from KwaZulu-Natal whose body was found disembowelled and decapitated had died of drowning. He reportedly went missing while he and his mother were visiting his father, a traditional healer, in December last year. Police said the exact cause of the mutilation is yet to be confirmed.

– Caxton News Service