Eastern Cape teen’s body found buried under missing 'boyfriend's' bed

A bizarre short-lived “romance” between an underage girl and an adult man has ended in horror with the teenage girl’s body being dug up from under her 39-year-old “boyfriend’s” bed.

Residents of Qawukeni village, near Qonce, watched in horror as the body of 15-year-old Yonela Nonkeneza was removed from the home of her alleged boyfriend.

Eastern Cape police spokesperson Colonel Sibongile Soci told DispatchLIVE: “The alleged suspect is known and detectives together with the provincial task team are following leads to track and trace the person who is believed to be on the run.”

DispatchLIVE was on the scene when the body was discovered.

Family of Yonela said the suspect had told them at the family home on Wednesday morning that he was going to buy a cigarette at a spaza shop, but he never returned.

The suspect’s uncle told DispatchLIVE at the scene that the man told him on Sunday night that he had just killed his teenage girlfriend of  two months.

It was an unusually suffocating smell from the 39-year-old suspect’s flat that led to the horror discovery late on  Wednesday afternoon.

When DispatchLIVE arrived at the home, the area had been cordoned off  by police as family of both the teen and the boyfriend waited anxiously for the digging under the bed.

There was blood-curdling screaming when  the worst fears were realised and the the body found.

Nolusindiso Manini, Yonela’s cousin, broke down as the body was moved into the mortuary van.

The family of the boyfriend looked shocked, disappointed and scared.

Yonela had just arrived in the village of her father’s family in February. The family was going to perform a traditional ceremony formally welcoming her into their fold.

In the short time she spent in Qawukeni, she started dating the man, who is now on the run.

Nolusindiso said she last saw Yonela on Saturday morning.

“On Saturday morning, another relative from Cape Town requested to see her, as she heard her uncle’s daughter (Yonela) was in the village.

“I managed to find and fetch Yonela from her boyfriend’s house, and we went to our home so that she could meet her.

“She used to spend most of the time with [the boyfriend], she only went back home just to freshen up and change her clothes,”  Manini said.

Manini said she found out about the tragedy yesterday after getting a Facebook message from a relative requesting her to check on Yonela’s whereabouts, as she had been missing for more than two days.

The stricken uncle of the boyfriend said he had been alerted by his brother on Sunday evening.

“We knew he was with her in his room in our family homestead though I was not there,” he said.

In the evening he came knocking on my brother’s door, and said the most chilling thing, “u Yonela akashukumi uswekelike. Ndizomngcwabela apha e roomini.”(Yonela is not moving. She is dead. I’m going to bury her in my room.”

The uncle was too scared to check and waited for the arrival of his brother.

“Upon my arrival on Monday, I inspected the house, but I could not find anything that was suspicious, until my brother told me that he had confessed to killing Yonela.”

The soft-spoken uncle could not utter words describing his emotions. He repeatedly said he was disappointed and worried.

While the body was being driven away in a forensic vehicle, Yonela’s peers were enjoying their daily netball practice in the dusty netball courts completely unaware of what had just happened.

Soci said SAPS crime scene management and criminal record centre members were  processing the scene and had dug up the body.

Soci said: “It is alleged that the 15-year-old was last seen on Sunday.

“The circumstances surrounding the incident will form part of the investigation and the cause of death is unknown and will be confirmed by postmortem.”

DispatchLIVE