Panic and shock gripped residents of Mogoditshane’s Bodididi Ward last Friday afternoon when tenants and their landlord waited anxiously for hours for the police, after one tenant was found by her neighbour hanging from the roof of her house.
“The young lady, who is suspected to have committed suicide, was last seen on Tuesday. She was later discovered by her neighbour this Friday afternoon,” said Ephraim Basima, a witness at the scene.
Basima complained that the Mogoditshane Police took long to come to the scene. He said they caused much shock and panic to the tenants who were frightened and worried by the incident. He accused the police of being negligent and incompetent for coming five hours late after being alerted of the situation on Friday at 3pm.
Basima said coming late to crime scenes and accidents, which he said has always been synonymous with the Mogoditshane Police, can hamper investigations.
When contacted for comment on Monday, Mogoditshane Police Station Commander, Nkwebi Chilisa, said he was on leave and did not know much about the case. He referred queries to his assistant, Deputy Station Commander Albert Foda, who dismissed the claims by the tenants that the police arrived late in the evening.
“That cannot be true because as soon as we heard the report around 5pm, we went to the scene,” said Foda, in an interview on Monday afternoon.
Foda told The Telegraph that they had booked a post-mortem for the deceased, and investigations are ongoing.
The dead woman, aged 24, is from Kanye. Witnesses said she had been reported missing for three days prior to her death. She was found hanging from the roof by her worried neighbour who had peeped through the window after several attempts to reach her mobile phone were not successful, witnesses said.
The dead woman’s neighbour was too distraught to talk and declined to speak to this reporter.
