A murder-suicide has left three children orphans, including a teenager who found his parents' bodies.
|||Durban - A murder-suicide has left three children orphans, including a teenager who found his parents’ bodies.
The 13-year-old boy found his father’s body hanging from a tree and his mother’s body dumped in an outdoor bathroom next door to their rented home in Clermont, Durban.
Police spokesman, Captain Thulani Zwane, said it was believed the man had killed his girlfriend on Friday then hanged himself.
Inquest dockets had been opened at KwaDabeka police station, he said.
A woman who lives on the same property, who did not want to be named, said she had heard sounds of a person choking - and that of someone climbing a tree - but had not thought anything of it.
The dead woman had lived in a rented house on the property with her three children, she said, adding that the man lived in Hammarsdale but visited his girlfriend and children from time to time.
The couple had had a quarrel the previous weekend, she said.
“(She) threw him out of the house, she told him to leave. I could hear them shouting at each other from inside my house.”
She said the man returned to the house on Thursday and waited for his girlfriend.
She was dropped off later by a man and knocked on the door, but her boyfriend would not open it for her.
“I could hear them shouting - her shouting to be let in and him telling the children not to open for her.”
She said she then heard a sound like someone was choking, but paid no attention to it.
“After hearing this sound I heard footsteps and then I heard the trees rustling like someone was climbing up a tree in our yard,” she said.
“I fell asleep once there was silence.”
On Friday morning her sister saw a body hanging from a tree, but was too scared to take a closer look, she said.
“She called for (the teen) and when he got closer to the tree he screamed that it was his father and he ran back to their house to tell his mother,” she said.
“As he was going down the stairs in the old bathroom he saw his father’s jacket on the floor and when he went inside to pick it up he saw it had been covering his mother’s face.”
The neighbour said the woman’s body had been taken to KwaNyuswa, where she was originally from, for burial.
Daily News