‘She was one of us’: Dawn Park women gather in horror as ninth woman is found dead - IOL

Still in their slippers, dressing gowns and blankets, women dropped what they were doing and rushed from their homes in Dawn Park on Thursday morning after hearing that one of their own had been found partially naked with her throat slit.

At the scene, an open space in Lama Street in the Villa Lisa area of the Boksburg suburb, they gathered around her body, some weeping as they looked at the woman who had been so brutally murdered.

She was wearing only a blue T-shirt and pink underwear.

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, presumably 30, had not yet been identified.

"A multidisciplinary team of experts has already been mobilised to work on the cases and ensure that those responsible for these crimes are brought before the court," Nevhuhulwi said.

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

Police and a forensic investigator lift a silver sheet over the body of a woman found in Lama Street, Dawn Park, Boksburg, on Thursday, as detectives take notes beside them. She is the ninth woman found dead in Ekurhuleni in nine weeks.

When an IOL team arrived, police were at the scene and a myriad of women milled about.

Police bakkies and unmarked cars were parked one behind the other as a forensic pathology van stood with its back doors open beside the body.

Men in dark overalls brought out a white sheet and spread it beside where the woman lay, while yellow police tape was tied between the weeds and pooled in the muddy puddles left by the rain.

Behind the tape, the women who had rushed from their homes watched as the scene unfolded, some still in their slippers, dressing gowns and blankets.

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

"There have been incidents before that we managed to crack and solve," Mosikili told IOL.

"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, and that the leads so far looked likely to show whether the killings were linked.

"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 just four days.

On Monday, a partially naked woman with bruises on her body was found in Olifantsfontein.

On Tuesday, the body of a woman was found beside a road in KwaThema, Springs, and Kekana said early findings by pathologists showed she had been strangled.

On Wednesday, her family identified her at the Springs Mortuary as Dineo Evelyn Motapane, 38, and police said she had last been seen alive on Sunday, before her family had even reported her missing.

At the weekend, Kekana warned women and girls to take extra care when they walked, ran or exercised, and said the warning was not meant to stop women from living their lives.

The first of the nine women, aged 37, was found naked with her hands bound with cable ties in a field in Kempton Park on July 15, and a suspect was arrested two days later.

Itumeleng Kekana, 32, went missing in Kempton Park on July 17.

Her family searched hospitals, police stations and mortuaries for more than two weeks until a man on his way to work found her body on Great North Road in Pomona on August 3.

She left behind her parents and a 14-year-old daughter.

A 32-year-old woman was found partially clothed near the R21 on August 24.

On September 7, the body of a woman in her late 20s was found in a river in Clayville, near Mall of Thembisa, wearing only her underwear.

Three days later, the naked and badly decomposed body of a woman was found near the R21 in Kempton Park.

Elizabeth "Tsontso" Moselakgomo, 38, a mother who went out for her usual run last week Wednesday, was found dead behind a hotel in Rhodesfield last week Saturday.

Only three of the nine women, Itumeleng Kekana, Moselakgomo and Motapane, have been publicly identified.

Acting police minister Firoz Cachalia said on Tuesday that it was too early to say there was a pattern to the deaths, and announced a police lockdown of Kempton Park and surrounding areas.

Acting national police commissioner Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane said police were tracing a person of interest.

Police have offered a R400,000 reward for information leading to arrests, and the DA has offered R500,000.