Pretoria - Schoolgirls at Amandasig Secondary north of Pretoria are living in fear after matric pupil Reneilwe Seloadi, 19, was found dead, her legs severed and her lower body burnt this week.
The girls on Friday said they were terrified that whoever it was who attacked their classmate may come after them next unless they were apprehended.
“We do not know if these people are stalking young girls or if it was just by chance that she fell victim to this crime,” one girl told the Pretoria News on a visit to the school on Friday.
Others agreed that until the person, or people, who had killed their classmate were caught, they would not feel safe.
Reneilwe, who was from Mothutlung west of Ga-Rankuwa, was reported missing to the police on Sunday. Her naked body was found by members of the community in a secluded area of Extension 1 where she lived late on Wednesday.
“(Reneilwe) was found with her legs cut off and her lower body partially burned,” police spokeswoman Kealeboga Molale said.
The police found evidence that the crime had been committed at the spot she was found. “But at this stage we cannot say when exactly it was carried out,” she added.
A local man was badly assaulted by three others after the gruesome find. They suspected him of being the perpetrator. They were arrested and appeared before the Ga-Rankuwa Magistrate’s Court on charges of assault on Friday.
Reneilwe was described as a fun-loving, talkative and a jokey person by fellow pupils. School principal, Sanet Jacobsz, who had a photograph of the girl with a candle in her office, said her death was a loss.
Reneilwe and the matrics had been midway through exams and her classmates described how hard it was to apply their minds to the paper they wrote on Friday as they thought about her horrible death.
Local religious leaders and social workers from the Education Department’s district office were at the school to offer counselling on Friday, in a programme which will go on until affected learners have been consoled.
“For someone to grab her from under her family’s noses and violate her where they could have been seen and heard, and then go on to cut her legs off and burn her right there… is evidence that they are callous, heartless cruel people,” a Grade 9 learner said.
Anyone with information can contact Constable Mmitsi on 078 259 9902. Colonel Letlhogonolo Gause, of Mmakau Police, said the investigating team would not rest until the culprits had been brought to book.
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Pretoria News Weekend