Community members of Greenspark were shocked by the murder of a young man last weekend.
According to Mr Patrick Mokwena, he was at home on Sunday, 17 September, when he heard a gunshot at approximately 01:15.
“I wanted to go outside, but my mother stopped me,” he says.
Later that morning, Mokwena had just gone on his morning run towards the N12 when community members called him and told him someone had been shot near his home. He got a lift and rushed back to where he saw a group of people standing near the footbridge over the R500.
The body of the late Mr Thabiso Hlongwane was near bricks dumped among rubbish on the open veld between Mokwena’s home and the bridge.
“There was an empty cartridge lying near his head. “Some people called the police, but they did not come. Luckily, I managed to get hold of someone,” says Mokwena.
Police members and SAPS forensics came to the scene, and according to Hlongwane’s aunt, Ms Ninko Margaret Magakwe, she suspects her nephew was murdered. By printing time, no one had been arrested for the crime yet.
“He was a good person who never bothered anyone,” Magakwe remembers her nephew.
“Yes, he was a good guy who worked for himself and looked after his mother and brothers,” says Mokwena.
Hlongwane was buried in the Fochville cemetery on Saturday, 23 September.
Although the Herald tried to get information about this incident from the Fochville station commissioner, Lt-Col Ntambudzeni Netshitangani, none was forthcoming.