National police commissioner General Fannie Masemola confirmed the bodies of three missing officers had been found, along with two others.
Image: Timothy Bernard/ Independent Media
National police commissioner General Fannie Masemola hopes their investigations will be able to uncover how the three missing police officers ended up in the Hennops river.
Their bodies were found together with two others, one of them an admin clerk attached to the Lyttleton police station.
Officials were at the site Tuesday after multiple bodies were retrieved from the river in Centurion, Tshwane.
POLICE have confirmed that the three police officers who went missing last week have been positively identified among the five bodies that were retrieved from the Hennops River in Centurion. General Fanie Masemola said the remains of Cebekhulu Linda, 24, Keamogetswe Buys, 30, and Boipelo Senoge, 20, were located in the river after pieces of the VW Polo they were travelling in were found along the N1 highway.
Image: TIMOTHY BENARD Independent Newspapers
The three police constables, 30-year-old Keamogetswe Buys, 20-year-old Constable Boipelo Senoge, and 24-year-old Cebekhulu Linda were last seen in Gauteng in the early hours of Thursday, before they mysteriously vanished.
They were travelling from Free State, via Gauteng and heading to Limpopo.
It was previously reported that the three police officers' last known location was the Engen fuel station in Gauteng, on the N1 on Thursday.
The trio was travelling in a Volkswagen Polo hatchback with registration number JCL 401 FS.
Masemola on Tuesday confirmed the bodies of the officers had been found, along with two others.
He said the high-level team that had been tasked with investigating their disappearance had spent sleepless nights combing the length and breadth of Gauteng, Free State and Limpopo.
“On Monday, our investigation and search led us to the Hennops river in Centurion. With the assistance of our drone pilots, cybercrime unit, HAWKS, Crime and counter-intelligence unit, SAPS and Gauteng Traffic Airwing as well as Bidvest Protea Coin Airwing.
“We first found pieces of vehicle parts believed to be of a VW polo along the N1… that led us to the banks of the river where we found a Renault Kangoo panel van.
“Our SAPS and Tshwane divers immediately commenced with the search, where we discovered two bodies, one of the driver of the Renault panel van who it has just came to light that he is one of our employees attached to the Lyttleton Police Station and the second body was that of Constable Senoge. We had to abandon the search as it was already dark.”
Tuesday morning, the third body was discovered which is believed to be that of Constable Linda.
“We further found a fourth decomposed body, we are still trying to identify who this person is. Later this afternoon, we sadly found the fifth body of Constable Buys. The families were taken to the mortuary where they have identified the bodies of their children and loved ones.”
Masemola said they were still searching for the VW Polo.
“We don’t want to speculate at this stage what led to the discovery of these bodies in this river, whether it was an accident or not, our investigation will reveal those aspects once we find their vehicle,” Masemola said.
“This is not how we expected this case to unfold, we were hoping for a positive outcome. Be that as it may, we are relieved that we could provide the painful closure to the families and the broader SAPS family. Investigations are still continuing into this matter.”
Cape Times