Cape Town – Three occupants of a car were killed in the same area where Heidi Scheepers' VW Caravelle is believed to have left the road at Voëlklip beach near Herolds Bay on Tuesday.
Police said on Thursday the body of a child, the 35-year-old Scheepers' two-year-old son Hugo, had been recovered from the wreckage of a vehicle spotted at the bottom of a cliff.
Southern Cape police spokesperson Malcolm Pojie said: “We recovered the body of a two-year-old boy that was found floating near one of the gorges near the place where the vehicle was spotted.
"Subsequently it was recovered and removed by pathology services. Continuing efforts are being made to retrieve or find the other two missing people, the mother and 6-year-old daughter."
Pojie added that they had spotted a vehicle's chassis from the top of the Voëlklip cliff but unfortunately efforts to retrieve the vehicle, "which can now be positively linked as the vehicle that the missing persons were travelling in", hasn't been successful yet.
Three Nelson Mandela Bay University, from the George campus, died in the early hours on November 15, 2015 after their Toyota bakkie plunged 100m down a cliff after leaving a gravel road near Voëlklip beach.
The bodies of 21-year-old Marnic Els and 22-year-old Luandro Jansen were found, but the 20-year-old Werner Finger's body was never recovered.
Scheepers, who lives close to Voëlklip beach, her 6-year-old daughter Cuzette and son went missing after going for a walk on the beach at about 6pm on Tuesday.
Scheepers' husband, Ettienne, 36, had gone with his family to the beach but left on foot to check on some of his businesses.
Heidi didn't take her cellphone with her to the beach and Ettienne returned home at 7pm to find his family had not returned.
The couple, who have one special-needs child, owns the Herolds Bay Cafe, which was open on Thursday, and run the Garden Route Property Management group. Ettienne cancelled his trip to Mozambique to continue the search.
Police issued an urgent appeal to social media users and the public in general to refrain from posting or spreading any rumours relating to the missing mother and her two children.