Cape Town -
Seventeen-year-old Keshia Kortje, who was believed to have been pregnant, was found with her throat slit in the garage of a Kensington house near her home on Tuesday morning.
Neighbours and friends of the murdered Kensington teen on Wednesday morning said that the community had lost one of its brightest and friendliest young people.
She had left her parents home in Ventura Street, about a kilometre away from where she was found, with a male friend shortly after 10pm on Monday evening, residents who are family friends told the Cape Argus.
“This has come as a major shock. There are gangsters and drugs in this area, but we are not used to murders. This is Kensington, it is not like some of the Cape’s other violent neighbourhoods,” said Beverley Abrahams, a neighbour who knew Keshia well.
Her parents were on their way to the morgue to view their child’s body this morning.
Her father asked for privacy for the grieving family and said that he would make a statement to the media a later.
But residents gathered outside the Kortje home were willing to share their understanding of the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the body.
They said it appeared as though a neighbour near the house where Keshia’s body was found alerted police and the SPCA to the scene to investigate a dog that had been crying for a number of hours. When police arrived at the house in Ventura Street, they found a dog which had been tied up with a rope around its tail.
Upon further investigation, police found Keshia’s body lying in the home’s garage, Abrahams said.
“The man and his father (the people whom residents believe may be responsible for the murder) have fled. There were other people who stayed at that house, and police took them to the station yesterday,” Abrahams added.
On Wednesday morning the Cape Argus found the house where the body was discovered but the house of the neighbour who alerted police appeared to be vacant.
Police this morning confirmed that they found Keshia’s body wrapped in a plastic sheet at the home on Tuesday at 11.30am.
“The circumstances are being investigated. A murder case was opened for investigation. No one has been arrested as yet.
Anyone with information about this incident is kindly requested to contact Crime Stop on 08600 10111,” said police spokesman Captain FC van Wyk.
Cape Argus