NELSPRUIT – Cleaners of Riverside Value Mart were horrified to discover blood and what appeared to be a foetus in the centre’s public toilets on Friday.
According to various witnesses, a woman approached an employee of one of the centre’s stores and asked to use the public toilets. She then proceeded to run to the toilets and wasn’t seen again.
Cleaners were distressed to find blood on the floor of the women’s toilets and a bloody mass in one of the toilets. The toilet for disables persons next door also had a mess of blood on the floor.
SAPS were immediately notified and the scene was inspected by both them and emergency services. There was no progress in processing the scene and the centre was asked to preserve the scene until further investigation could be done. One of the paramedics helped cleaners to put up barrier tape.
By Monday there was still no action from the police and some of the centre’s tenants started getting worried about the potential health hazard.
“The bathrooms are used quite a lot and we don’t want shoppers to get sick. We also can’t tell them what happened as this could give the centre bad publicity,” one of the tenants explained.
A tenant phoned the SAPS Flying Squad early Monday morning, hoping that they would get something done. Two officers arrive on the scene later that morning but said that they weren’t going to remove the mess. They advised the centre’s security officer to get a plumber to remove the blockage, after which they could investigate it.
Upon enquiry, SAPS provincial spokesperson Col Leonard Hlathi, confirmed that the incident was reported to the police on December 27. He said that the police found blood but no foetus and no case was opened.
