Cape Town - Another Western Cape woman has lost the struggle to protect herself from an attacker she knew.
Melandri Bukkies, 20, was stabbed in her Atlantis home.
Police spokesman FC van Wyk said a search was launched on Monday for a man known to the police. He had arrived at Bukkies’ house at about 11am.
The man was her ex-boyfriend and he had “entered her home and assaulted her by stabbing her”, said Van Wyk. “She died at the scene.”
Captain Cyril Dicks, of Atlantis, said the suspect was 33 years old.
One of the town’s councillors, Barbara Rass, told the Cape Argus:
“It’s our second body in the week. We’ve lost two girls - both inside their own houses.”
Bukkies’ parents said the death of their daughter at the hands of her former boyfriend had left them in “disbelief”.
A friend, Shimoney Josephs, said she had be woken by a commotion in Bukkies’ bedroom and when she got there she saw that her friend had been stabbed in the neck.
“I heard fighting inside and then I heard Amy, Melandri’s baby, crying. I went to the neighbours to get some help and they called the ambulance and the police,” Josephs said.
Josephs said the stabbing had happened before noon and that her friend of three months died in her room before the ambulance arrived.
Bukkies’s father Abraham Bukkies said he had last spoken to his daughter before he left for work.
“She never gave us any problems. She wasn’t a child that liked to go out.”
He said his daughter had left school four years ago after falling pregnant.
Her mother, Mina Arendse, said their daughter had an interdict against her alleged attacker.
“He must have seen that she was at home alone …we hope the police can catch him because we are scared he will come for us as well,” Arendse said.
Bukkies’ murder followed that of at least three other young women in the last fortnight.
Anene Booysen, 17, of Bredasdorp, was gang-raped, disembowelled and left to die.
Audrey Bianca Green, 19, of Scottsville, was found stashed in a drawer beneath a bunk bed.
The body of 18-year-old Jo-Anne Diane van Schalkwyk of Atlantis was found in bushes near the West Coast town.
Cape Argus