Half-naked woman’s body found in Cape Town bushes not yet identified

[This story contains sensitive details]

The half-naked body of a young woman found in a bush in Mitchells Plain over the weekend has not yet been identified.

Western Cape police spokesperson Colonel Andrè Traut confirmed on Tuesday that the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death were under investigation.

Lentegeur Community Police Forum chairperson Byron de Villiers was alerted to the gruesome discovery made on Sunday after a woman and her boyfriend who had been walking through the overgrown field came upon the corpse and sought help.

Disturbed

De Villiers said he was disturbed by what he found when he and the local neighbourhood watch chairperson arrived at the scene, which separates the areas of Rondevlei, Morgan’s Village and Woodlands.

According to De Villiers, the woman’s body was naked from the waist down and was lying on her jeans. Her hands were tied with what looked like shoelaces and she had a belt around her neck, De Villiers recalled.

“She could not have been lying there for that long. She looked very young – between 16 and 21.”

He believed that the woman had been gagged, strangled and raped.

The vicinity off Weltevreden Parkway is a robbery hotspot, De Villiers said, with thieves hitting their victims at a nearby tuckshop and hotfooting it through the overgrown escape route.

Traut said investigations were continuing and that the exact cause of death was yet to be established.

No arrests have been made.

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