Cape Town - A young man thought by residents to be the boyfriend of a 19-year-old woman who was found butchered to death on a field has been killed just 20 metres away.
Some 17 hours after Lekita Moore was found dead on a field in Nooitgedacht on Sunday, Xavier Bester, 20, was shot twice in the head and lay between shacks in 8th Avenue, Valhalla Park.
Xavier lived with his mother and younger sister in 8ste Kamp.
His mother Sharon Bester would not comment on her son's killing but denied that he was in a relationship.
Lekita's dad Charl Moore also insisted she was not dating anyone.
Residents of 8gste Kamp, however, believe the murder of the young man is connected to the death of Lekita.
The young woman had been found stabbed to death and her genitals mutilated at the scene in Tuna Road on Sunday morning.
People in the settlement's claim that Bester and Moore were in a relationship at the time of her murder, whilst others speculated that he was a witness to her brutal death.
"I think the people shot him because he was a witness to what happened to that girl", one concerned resident said.
Xavier would spend most of his time at his grandmother's house in Hester Street.
His grandmother, Francis Groenewald, who last saw him on Sunday morning before going to church, couldn't contain her emotions as she spoke of her grandchild.
"Ek het hom nog Sondag gesien toe ek oppad kerk toe is. Ek het hom nog gevra waar is die kerk se geld?" she explains. ("I saw him on Sunday when I was on my way to church. I asked him where the church's money was.")
"Hy het vir my gese ek het nie geld vandag nie, ouma', en toe bars ons al twee uit van die lag." (He said he did not have money and we both laughed.")
After dropping out of school in Grade 6 with a learning disability, the 20-year-old spent most of his time on the corner outside his grandmother's house.
"Hy was nie a gangster nie, en hy het ook nooit drugs gedoen nie," Groenewald said. ("He was not a gangster and did not do drugs.")
At this stage police cannot link the two murders as investigations are still under way.
Colonel Andre Traut confirmed: "At 10pm on Sunday, a 20-year-old man was shot and killed in 8th Avenue Valhalla Park by an unknown suspect who is yet to be arrested."
"There are no new developments to respond to in connection with a murder case of a 19-year-old, as the investigation is ongoing."
Daily Voice