Johannesburg - A young boy’s grandfather held him tight in his arms in the back seat of a car, locked the doors and set it alight.
The helpless 4-year-old had no way of escaping while he was being burnt alive in his grandfather’s Toyota Camry in Azaadville, west of Joburg, on Wednesday.
Despite desperate attempts to douse the raging flames, the boy and his grandfather were burnt beyond recognition.
The boy’s family sat outside the family home in silence, on Thursday.
The sombre atmosphere pervaded the chilly autumn air as relatives sat alongside each other, quietly trying to comprehend how the 4-year-old’s life could have been so brutally taken.
While his parents went to identify his body, his paternal grandfather attended to the media gathered there to find out what could have led to this unspeakable tragedy. But the elderly man said the family was too distraught to talk about it.
A security guard, who was one of several people who had tried to save the pair, had been left traumatised.
“I have seen and been through a lot in my life, but this is by far the worst thing I have experienced,” said the distraught patroller, who did not want to be named.
“While I was trying to put out the flames, I looked through the car’s window and the only thing I could see was the man’s leg burning.”
He said that during his patrol on that fateful afternoon, he had pulled up in the open veld, where the bottle-green car was parked.
“I didn’t notice anything odd about it, because people park there all the time.”
He left and continued patrolling the suburb. But shortly afterwards, he had been alerted that a car was on fire at the same spot.
“When I got there, I saw the car in flames and it was so powerful, there was nothing I could do to save the child,” he explained.
The guard blamed the police, who he said had failed to alert local security organisations that they were searching for the child.
“If I knew they were looking for the boy, I could have saved him,” he said.
Gauteng police spokesman Lieutenant Kay Makhubela said the police had been searching for the man and they knew what car he was driving.
This was after the grandfather had called the boy’s father, warning him of his murderous intentions.
“The boy’s grandfather had phoned the father and told him that he had the child and that he was going to kill him (the boy) and himself,” Makhubela said.
The child had been in the care of his grandfather and a domestic worker, because his parents had been at work.
The distraught father alerted the police. He pleaded with them to try to rescue the boy.
But the police were too late.
The murder-suicide has devastated the close-knit community.
The boy’s paternal grandfather, who was at the family home which is situated about 1km away from the crime scene, said they were too distraught and were not ready to talk to the media.
But the family’s neighbours relayed their distress over the boy’s horrible death.
Moonira Wadee, one of the neighbours, said she had known the boy’s grandfather as “Hola” and described him as a “good and helpful man”.
“I always knew him to be a good-hearted man who was always ready to lend a helping hand,” she added.
Wadee said the boy and his grandfather were close and she always saw them driving together.
But another neighbour, Ferdoze Verachia, painted a different picture of the family dynamic.
“I heard the man and his son-in-law arguing the night before, but I could not hear what it was about.
“I can’t understand how this could have happened to an innocent, little child.”
The motive for the arson attack is unknown.
Makhubela confirmed that murder and inquest dockets had been opened.
The Star