Four men were arrested for the murder of a Pinetown man just three days before he was due to move out of his home.
|||Durban - Police have arrested four men in connection with the murder of a Pinetown man who was found in a pool of blood just three days before he was due to move out of his home.
Kallie Potgieter, 78, was found by his domestic worker with his feet tied in his home in Ashley yesterday. His bakkie, television and computer had been stolen.
Potgieter, who had been living alone in his Voortrekker Road home for the past two years after his wife died, had finally agreed to move in with his daughter and son-in-law. He was going to move on Saturday.
Police spokesman, Captain Thulani Zwane, said the four men, aged between 23 and 27, were arrested in Nazareth near Pinetown and in Hammarsdale yesterday. “A task team started working from 8pm up until 4am. Police followed different leads and arrested four men who led them to all the stolen items,” he said.
Among the valuables that were recovered were DVD players and computers.
The four are expected to appear in the Pinetown Magistrate’s Court on Friday.
On Wednesday, friends and family watched as police removed Potgieter’s body from the house.
Potgieter’s domestic worker, Rose Zindela, said she arrived at about 8.15am to find the gate closed, the chain hanging on the gate and the padlock on the ground. “I saw the bakkie was not parked in front of the garage, so I assumed he (Potgieter) had gone somewhere.
“Usually when I enter through the gate the two dogs come to me, but this morning they were nowhere to be seen,” she said.
When she got to the door, she saw it was open. She entered and began calling out to Potgieter. She called out mkhulu (grandfather), as she normally referred to him, as he was fluent in Zulu.
“I went to the kitchen, still calling out for him. I saw that things had been moved in the house. I walked through the house and that was when I saw a pool of blood in the spare room and he was lying there.”
Potgieter’s legs were tied together and he was lying on his side. She thought he could still be alive and phoned his daughter.
Potgieter’s daughter, Hilda Fourie, said she and her husband, Joe, had been trying to convince Potgieter to move out of the house since his wife died, but he had refused, saying he had too many fond memories of the house.
“He had agreed to move and on Saturday we were going to be moving all his things into the trailer and he was going to be moving in with us.”
Fourie said she was planning to see her father after work yesterday and if Zindela had not pitched for work, it would have been she who discovered the body.
“My father was a kind man and he didn’t deserve to die the way that he did.”
John Leach, of the Ashley Neighbourhood Watch, said about a year ago house break-ins and robberies were a concern in the area, but these had decreased.
“Now we go for about three weeks without having incidents.
“I live across Potgieter’s house from the back and I had the windows open last night and I didn’t hear anything, not even the dogs barking,” Leach said.
Daily News