Cape Town - The family of a missing Stellenbosch University professor are hanging on to the hope that he will be found alive, as police prepare to trace his cellphone via signal searches.
Somerset West police have launched a massive hunt for paediatrician and lecturer Dr Louis Heyns, who was last seen at 8.30pm on Wednesday, when he left his brother’s home in Somerset West.
After finishing dinner, his brother Christo told Weekend Argus, Heyns said he had to get home as he had to prepare for a lecture he was giving the following day.
He got into his dark grey Peugeot 308 and drove off on to the N2, where he was last seen on a traffic camera that picked up his movements.
The father of three never arrived home.
His brother said Heyns usually called him when he got home, “but this time he didn’t”.
“I figured he was busy so I didn’t think much of it.”
Meanwhile, Heyns’s wife of 33 years, Dalene Heyns, said that when he hadn’t arrived home by midnight, she sent him an SMS.
As a paediatrician, Heyns often worked late, but she said he normally let her know when he was on his way home, by sending her an SMS.
He hadn’t responded an hour later, and she sent another SMS: “I’m getting very worried now.”
But there was still no answer, so she called her husband’s cellphone, which had been switched off.
Dalene said she then contacted other family members, and when they found out he had left Somerset West more than four hours previously, they reported him missing at the Parow police station.
“That night I called the Metro police and they told me that there had been no accidents in that area. I even called all the hospitals,” she told Weekend Argus.
At 6am the following day she, her brother-in-law and other family members drove around the areas they thought Heyns might be found.
“We knew that to go home he’d have to take the N2, the R300 and then the N1,” Christo Heyns said, “but we found nothing”.
Dalene Heyns said they were having a very difficult time, “but we must believe”.
Christo Heyns said his brother had originally intended dropping some fruit at his son’s nearby home on his way home from dinner, but had decided against it because it was late.
Alwyn Swart, Heyns’s son-in-law, has been on social networks trying to raise awareness about the case.
“The police are hoping to find him using his cellphone signal. From there they (will) search using a helicopter,” he told Weekend Argus.
Detective Warrant Officer Hannes Niemand could not be contacted for comment last night, but police reports said Heyns was wearing a black golf shirt, a grey blue jacket and brown pants. His car registration is CY 121 038.
Anyone with information should call
Niemand at 021 850 1325/44, or Crime Stop on 08600 1011.
Weekend Argus