After three days of searching, the mentally-challenged boy from Diepsloot who had been missing since Tuesday has been found in a stream not too far from his home.
Diepsloot police station spokesperson Captain Tinyiko Mathebula said the cause of death was unclear at this stage.
He said police were called by community members on Thursday morning.
“The boy has been found dead in a river in extension 1. It is not clear at this stage what caused the death. We will wait for post-mortem results.
“Community members called the police around 10am when they saw the boy’s body floating in the stream,” he said.
The Pretoria News had earlier reported that the distraught parents of Ngoako Mashao, who had cerebral palsy were offering a R50 000 reward to anyone who knew his whereabouts.
According to the father, Perege Theophilus Mamabolo (29), his son disappeared from his Diepsloot Extension 2 home around 2pm on Tuesday.
The boy’s father said that: “He was with his friend who stays in the same yard with us and they were playing outside.
Ngoako’s mother told me she went to check up on them after a short while but they both were not there so she quickly went to look for them where the friend stays but only found the boy and our son wasn't there. I was at work.
“People that stay around here said they saw him walking in the street alone in the afternoon.”
The father had said he had never gone missing for too long as they had always closely monitored his whereabouts.
He said they reported him missing almost an hour later after he disappeared and police have been searching for him since then.
“On the day he went missing we searched for him until 10pm, but with no luck. Again we searched the areas people said they had seen him but we couldn't find anything and police only recovered his soccer ball in a nearby river,” he said.