Trio found in Hennops River to be buried next week; joint memorial service on Tuesday

A joint memorial service will be held on Tuesday for the three constables who were found in the Hennops River in Centurion, but their funerals will take place separately.

Free State provincial premier MaQueen Letsoha-Mathae, MEC Jabu Mbalula, and provincial commissioner Lieutenant General Baile Motswenyane announced the funeral arrangements on Friday.

24-year-old Constable Cebekhulu Linda, 30-year-old Constable Keamogetswe Buys, and 20-year-old Constable Boipelo Senoge went missing for days, before their lifeless bodies were recovered from Hennops River on Wednesday, 29 April 2025.

Dates for the funerals

The trio’s joint memorial service will be held on Tuesday at Bobbies Park in Bloemfontein, Free State. Constable Senoge will be buried on Thursday, Cebekhulu on Friday and Buys on Saturday.

“We are here to support you and to also let you know that we are equally pained by your loss. We will travel this journey together because those three souls were our children, and we also feel the pain that you are feeling,” said Letsoha-Mathae.

The three constables were travelling from Bloemfontein to Limpopo when they went missing. Their lifeless bodies were found with two others, one of an admin clerk from the Lyttelton Police Station in Centurion and one unidentified person.

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Last known location

Police launched an investigation after the trio’s cellphones and vehicle tracker went turned off. National police commissioner Brigadier Athlenda Mathe said the constables’ last known location was at the Engen garage near the Grasmere toll plaza on the N1 south of Johannesburg on a Wednesday.

“The members were off duty at the time and did not make it to their area of deployment.”

The discovery of the trio was driven by a 24-hour venue operational centre (VOC)  and a full-scale search with a high-level team of detectives and crime intelligence operators from Gauteng and the Free State.

How the trio was found

National Police Commissioner General Fannie Masemola, during a media briefing, said the high-level Saps team spent sleepless nights for six days combing through Gauteng, Free State and Limpopo searching for the missing police officers.

The commissioner said the investigation and search led them to Hennops River, where officers found pieces of vehicle parts believed to be a VW Polo along the N1.

This discovery led officers to the banks of the river, where they located a Renault Kangoo panel van.

“We don’t want to speculate at this stage what led to the discovery of these bodies in this river, whether it was an accident or not. Our investigation will reveal those aspects once we find their vehicle,” the commissioner said.

Vehicle found

On Thursday, police recovered the car the trio were travelling in from Hennops River, after parts of the car were found a day before.

Mathe confirmed that the car pulled from the river is the one the police have been searching for.

“The vehicle chassis number confirms this is the vehicle that Saps has been searching for,” said Mathe.

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