She was one of us’: Dawn Park residents shaken after ninth woman found dead - IOL

Police and a forensic investigator lift a silver sheet over the body of a woman found.

A woman’s body was discovered in an open space in Lama Street, Villa Lisa, Dawn Park, on Thursday morning, drawing shocked residents from nearby homes.

Still in slippers, dressing gowns and wrapped in blankets, women hurried to the scene, some weeping as they confronted the brutal reality of a local woman’s death.

The woman was found partially naked, wearing only a blue T-shirt and pink underwear, with what appeared to be a fatal injury to her throat.

The grim discovery brings to nine the number of women found dead in Ekurhuleni in just nine weeks.

Gauteng police spokesperson Colonel Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi said the woman, presumed to be about 30, had not yet been identified.

Acting Gauteng police commissioner Major General Fred Kekana said preliminary information indicated the woman had been killed elsewhere and her body dumped in Dawn Park.

Deputy national police commissioner Lieutenant-General Tebello Mosikili, who was at the scene, said police were capable of solving the killings.

Mosikili said: "I am very confident, and I will say this, putting my head on the block, that the teams that we have are very much able and capable of doing it."

Mosikili said police were following every lead.

"We cannot give a case of this magnitude to the province alone," she said. "At least the national head office is here."

The woman found in Lama Street was the third person found dead in Ekurhuleni in four days.

On Monday, a partially naked woman with bruises was found in Olifantsfontein. On Tuesday, a woman was found beside a road in KwaThema, Springs, and preliminary findings indicated she had been strangled. Her family later identified her as Dineo Evelyn Motapane, 38.

Only three of the nine women have been publicly identified: Itumeleng Kekana, 32, Elizabeth "Tsontso" Moselakgomo, 38, and Motapane.

Acting police minister Firoz Cachalia said it was too early to say there was a pattern to the deaths. Police have offered a R400 000 reward for information leading to arrests, while the DA has offered R500 000.