The death of a 12-year-old girl has sent shockwaves and sorrow through the small village of Pitseng in the Ngwaketse District.
The Standard seven pupil committed suicide by hanging herself with a belt on Saturday.
According to the police, the girl lived with her grandmother and her two young siblings, while their mother stayed a few kilometres away in Mokhomma village.
Before she committed suicide, the young girl had apparently shown her displeasure after her grandmother brought only two sweets from a tuck shop late in the evening; which she then gave to the younger siblings.
The Voice Online learnt that despite re-assurance from the grandmother that she’ll give her money to buy her own sweets in the morning, the sulking adolescent was nowhere to be found at dinner time.
Jwaneng Police Station Commander Superintendent Thuso Basuti said when the grandmother did find her, she assumed that she had gone out to play with neighbouring kids.
He said later when it became apparent that she was not at any of the neighbouring homesteads, a search party with the help of other concerned villagers was launched.
“As it was already dark, the search was abandoned, and the grandmother went to bed not knowing where her grand daughter was,” The Voice Online learnt.
After a sleepless few hours, the old lady is said to have risen up at around 4am on Sunday morning to continue searching for her missing grand daughter.
“It was at the break of dawn when she made the gruesome discovery. The missing child was hanging by the neck from a tree in the nearby bushes,” Basuti told The Voice.
He said the girl used her dress belt to take her own life. Superintendent Basuti revealed that the corpse is still at Jwaneng Mine Hospital awaiting postmortem.