Papa Penny’s heartbreak as son commits suicide

Young man commits suicide at train station

Tsonga disco pioneer Penny Penny is grieving over the death of his stepson Nicholas. The 23-year-old first born son of Papa Penny’s wife, Mama Nomi, allegedly committed suicide on Thursday afternoon at Soshanguve train station, north of Pretoria. Nicholas, who had made a cameo appearance on Penny’s popular reality TV show Papa Penny Ahee, lived with his grandparents in Soshanguve. Speaking to Sowetan yesterday, Penny, pictured, said the family has still not come to terms with news of his death.

“He woke up in the morning and he was very good. So around 3pm after taking a bath he just told the grandfather that he’s coming back [after going out],” Penny said. “At around 10pm, we received a call that he had not returned home. We tried calling him but his phone went onto voicemail. We tried calling his friends and they didn’t know where he was. That’s when we started to suspect something was wrong. “Around 11pm, the grandfather was looking through his room and found a letter with the message that ‘I’m going to kill myself at Soshanguve train station’. That’s when the grandparents called the police and they were told that it [suicide] happened around 4pm. “I drove there [from Limpopo] the same night. We went to check and found that it was indeed him. Apparently, people tried to stop him.” Penny said they never suspected Nicholas would do something like this. “I don’t know what his problem was. He used to tell his mother sometimes that ‘I’m going to kill myself’.

“During the day on Thursday, he sent his mother a picture with the peace sign. The mother didn’t think much of it.” Nicholas will be buried in Soshanguve on Saturday.

Police spokesperson Cpt Stephen Maluleka said they did not have “an inquest case opened of that nature at Rietgat police station for the past week”.