By Palesa Matlala
- Dawn Park resident Lethabo Leruna says women fear leaving their homes after another woman was found partially naked with her throat slit.
- Police have brought in national investigators to establish whether the nine women found dead across Ekurhuleni in nine weeks are linked.
Women in slippers, dressing gowns and blankets rushed from their homes in Dawn Park on Thursday morning after hearing another woman had been found murdered.
For women living nearby, the discovery has brought fear directly to their neighbourhood.
“We are living in fear. We are scared to leave our homes and we have daughters also,” resident Lethabo Leruna told Scrolla.Africa.
But Lethabo said women would not allow fear to control their lives.
“We will not live in fear, but rather we will fight as women,” she said.
Some women wept as they gathered near the open space in Lama Street in Villa Lisa, Boksburg, where the partially naked woman was found with her throat slit.
She was wearing a blue T-shirt and pink underwear.
Lethabo said residents did not want to believe a group of people was behind the killings. They feared it could instead be “one person terrorising women in the community”.
Police have not established whether the deaths are connected or whether one person is responsible.
The latest discovery brings to nine the number of women whose bodies have been found in Ekurhuleni in nine weeks.
Gauteng police spokesperson Colonel Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi said the woman, believed to be about 30, had not been identified.
Acting Gauteng police commissioner Major General Fred Kekana said early information suggested she was killed somewhere else before her body was dumped in Dawn Park.
Police vehicles filled the area as forensic pathology workers prepared to remove the body.
Behind police tape, women from the neighbourhood watched.
Deputy national police commissioner Lieutenant General Tebello Mosikili told Scrolla.Africa that national police were helping Gauteng investigators.
“There have been incidents before that we managed to crack and solve,” Mosikili said.
“I am very confident, and I will say this, putting my head on the block, that the teams that we have are very much able and capable of doing it.”
Mosikili said investigators were following every lead and trying to establish whether the killings were linked.
“We cannot give a case of this magnitude to the province alone,” she said.
“At least the national head office is here.”
The Dawn Park victim was the third woman found dead in Ekurhuleni in four days.
A partially naked woman with bruises was found in Olifantsfontein on Monday.
On Tuesday, another woman was found beside a road in KwaThema, Springs. Kekana said early findings showed she had been strangled.
Her family identified her on Wednesday as Dineo Evelyn Motapane, 38. She had last been seen alive on Sunday.
Former South African Police Service criminal profiler Elmarie Myburgh said police should investigate the deaths as a possible serial killer case while gathering evidence.
“If you later find that they are not linked, the investigation still continues and it helps,” Myburgh said.
Police have stressed that they have not established that a serial killer is responsible.
Acting police minister Firoz Cachalia said on Tuesday it was too early to establish a pattern.
Among the victims is runner Elizabeth “Tsontso” Moselakgomo, 38, whose body was found behind a hotel in Rhodesfield three days after she went out for her usual run.
Itumeleng Kekana, 32, disappeared from Kempton Park on 17 July. Her body was found on Great North Road in Pomona on 3 August after her family spent more than two weeks searching for her.
She left behind her parents and a 14-year-old daughter.
Only three of the nine women have been publicly identified: Itumeleng, Moselakgomo and Motapane.
Pictured above: Women gather near the scene where another woman was found murdered in Dawn Park.
Image source: Palesa Matlala
