Phone may hold clue to what happened to family
A GRANDSON’S cellphone may hold the clue to what happened to a family who disappeared while travelling from Durban to Standerton in Mpumalanga.
Julia Venter has been desperately searching for her daughter Jacqueline, 40, her daughter’s boyfriend Trevor Stokes, 53, Jolene Venter, 4, and
Barend Venter, 13, after she dropped them off at a bus station on May 2.
“I said goodbye to them, and that was the last I saw of them,” said Venter.
The family was travelling to Standerton, near to where Stokes had found work at the Twisdraai mine.
Venter told her daughter to contact her while she was on the bus. “She Whatsapped me and said that they would be arriving in Villiers,” she said.
But after that Venter heard nothing from the family.
Over the next week she tried to call them, but all the family’s cellphones were switched off.
Then on Thursday night Venter phoned Barend’s phone and it rang. “A man answered the phone; he told me that he had bought the phone from two men.”
Venter tried to phone back but the man never answered the phone again.
“I don’t know if they have been robbed, if they have been badly hurt. Maybe they were attacked (after stopping) at Villiers,” she said. “I don’t know if they are still alive.”
Jacqueline and her family had been living in a cottage on Venter’s property when Stokes lost his job. He had travelled to the Standerton/secunda area to find work on the mines.
“We were glad when he found work and said that he had found a place to stay. They decided that they would go as a family,” she said.
Venter has been phoning people in towns near Standerton, hoping to find out what happened to her family.
Durban’s Brighton Beach police said a missing person’s report had been filed and an investigation to find the family was under way.
Anyone with information can contact Warrant Officer Varley of the Brighton Beach police station at 031 451 8091 or the Pink Ladies at 072
214 7439.