Picking up in the weekend of the remaining part of the VW Polo in which three free state police officers traveled before they disappeared has somewhat ended the story of their tragic death.
Constables Linda Cebekhulu, 24, Boippelo Senoge, 20, and Keamogets -purchase, 30, were last seen on April 23 when they left Bloemfontein for Limpopo for implementation. Their bodies were found in the Hennops River in Centurion, Tshwane, last week after days of days of searches that led the police to offer a reward for information about their disappearance.
A high-level team of detectives led by the deputy National Commissioner for Crime Detection, LT-Gen Shadrack Sibiya, was founded to find them. The establishment of the team and the reward underline the seriousness with which police management has adopted the case.
But days later it would arise that the car from the trio was destroyed before he hit the barrier on the side of the N1 fast road and landed in the overflowing river. Their bodies were found together with two other people -one a juice employee and a non -geidified person. The circumstances of the death of the couple are still unknown.
Although there is some closure for the families of the three police officers, there are still questions to the assets of our police to collect crucial evidence and to quickly resolve cases of missing persons. The disappearance of the Free State Trio and the time needed to resolve what happened to them is a way of this.
The fact that it took days before the police finally found images of the highway gantries that led them to the scene where the car deposited in the river, does not inspire much confidence. In the absence of the facts of what happened, people decided to fill the vacuum with conspiracy theories.
Even after the bodies were found and evidence pointed to a possible crash that led to the death of the officers, many remain skeptical on social media and in fact they claimed a cover without facts. Police management must therefore harm responsibility for this, given how they dealt with the matter and the lead time that was needed to provide the public facts.
The sad reality, however, is that many families whose loved ones are missing have endured even worse lead times of our police before they knew what happened to their family members. Such a case is that of three -year -old Mojalefa Savhuli who was missing on 27 April. His body was found on 1 May in a nearby stream in Tshepisong on the West Rand, but it is still unclear what happened to him.
His family can only find closure if they have answers to what exactly happened.
SOWETAN
www.sowetanlive.co.za
