Teen raped, tortured to death
2010-01-25 22:04
Bloemfontein - A Free State teenager was raped, tortured and left for dead in a small stream in W-section in Botshabelo, allegedly by her friends, police said on Monday.
The 19-year-old girl lived long enough to tell police what had happened before she died on Saturday afternoon, Superintendent Thandi Mbambo said.
Two men, aged 20, who knew her, asked her to accompany them to a tavern in W-section, Botshabelo, on Friday night.
"On the way to the tavern, the two allegedly deviated from the initial route and instead went to an open field near a river in Botshabelo."
There one of the men raped her, then left her in the company of the other. The second man allegedly gouged her eyes out with a pair of nail clippers.
Mbambo said the woman's left eye had been completely removed, the right one hung out of its socket. The man allegedly stabbed her and jumped on her stomach.
Police believed that at around 15:00 on Saturday the man threw the woman into the shallow river, thinking she was dead. She however crawled to a nearby road where two passers-by found her. She managed to hang on long enough to tell the police who her attackers were, before dying in hospital later that day.
One of the men was arrested on Saturday afternoon and the second on Sunday. They were expected to appear in the Botshabelo Magistrate's Court on Tuesday on charges of murder and rape.
- SAPA