A pregnant South African woman was found hanging from a tree after she vanished last week from her home, according to a report.
Tshegofatso Pule, who was eight months pregnant, was discovered dead Monday with stab wounds in her chest near Florida Lake in Roodeport, a suburb of Johannesburg, the South African outlet Sowetan Live reported.
The 28-year-old was last seen Thursday getting into a cab from her home in Soweto, saying she was going to visit her boyfriend, the report said.
Her family said she called later that night, claiming she got in a fight with her boyfriend and planned to return home, the outlet reported.
“She got into a fight with her boyfriend and demanded to leave,” the relative, who was not identified, told Sowetan Live. “We tried calling her later that night but we couldn’t get through to her.”
The family member said there had been friction because Pule’s boyfriend was married to a woman who knew about the affair.
“We cannot speculate about what led to her death, but we know things were not well with her boyfriend,” the relative told the outlet. “His wife also knew about Tshego and she was always fighting with her.”
Gauteng police said a local resident stumbled across her body hanging from a tree Monday and notified them, the outlet reported.
“The deceased is also confirmed to be pregnant,” police spokesperson Kay Makhubele told the outlet.
Police said no suspects have been identified, but the case was being investigated as a murder.
Pule’s horrific death sparked the hashtag #JusticeForTshego, which was trending on Twitter Monday.
Crime statistics released last year showed that 2,930 adult women were murdered in a 12-month period from 2017 to 2018 in South Africa, which amounts to one murder every three hours, according to the BBC.