Durban - The son of a security company owner has been left traumatised after seeing his father’s burnt remains lying in a manhole near an abandoned hotel outside Newcastle.
Haroon Dawood Warasally, 56, owner of Pelican Security in Ladysmith, was stabbed to death and robbed, allegedly by two men known to him, before his body was doused in petrol, set alight and dumped in the manhole last Thursday night.
When he did not return home that evening, his family tried calling him but his phone just rang.
His son, Dawood, 28, searched different areas where Warasally had been scheduled to drop off night shift staff to replace day security guards, and to pay salaries.
Dawood and a colleague instead found his father’s van parked on the N11, near the abandoned Ballengeich Hotel, which security personnel have been guarding for about a year.
Both men looked for Warasally without success. They reported his father’s disappearance at the police station.
Police returned to the abandoned site that evening, where Warasally’s badly burnt body was found.
“He sustained multiple stab wounds and was badly burnt. There was no flesh,” said Warasally’s brother, Abbas, an IFP councillor in Ladysmith. He believes his brother was targeted because he was paying salaries that day.
Abbas said a few thousand rand was stolen as well as his sibling’s firearm, and told POST his nephew was traumatised by the discovery and would soon start counselling.
Police spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Shooz Magudulela said the motive for the killing was as yet unknown: “A 40-year-old suspect was arrested on Friday and charged with murder.”
The POST