{"id":11645,"date":"2013-11-11T09:22:29","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T09:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=11645"},"modified":"2013-11-11T09:22:29","modified_gmt":"2013-11-11T09:22:29","slug":"diepsloot-baby-eaten-by-rats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=11645","title":{"rendered":"Diepsloot baby eaten by rats"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body_content\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/rat.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-11646\" alt=\"rat\" src=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/rat.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" \/><\/a>A case of murder is being investigated after a baby who was left alone for the night in a shack was found dead and mutilated by rats,\u00a0Gauteng police said on Monday.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;We have registered a case of murder, but initially it was an inquest,&#8221; Captain Tsekiso Mofokeng said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">On Sunday morning, Diepsloot residents raised the alarm after finding the baby dead in a shack.\u00a0Police arrived to find the body with a foot missing.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;Further investigations informed police that [the foot] was bitten off by rats,&#8221; said Mofokeng.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Police were still awaiting the results of the postmortem to definitively determine the cause of death.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Mofokeng said the baby&#8217;s mother was missing and had still not been located by Monday morning, contrary to media reports that she had reported the matter to police.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Child neglect<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.6em;\">He said the murder investigation would look into how the baby came to be left alone in the shack.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In September, a case of child neglect was registered against the baby&#8217;s mother, which resulted in her two children being placed in the care of their grandmother, he said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The mother had picked up only the seven-month-old boy from the grandmother on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Diepsloot\u00a0has been rocked by a spate of recent child killings. In October, two toddler girls aged two and three were discovered in public toilets after being raped and murdere<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Hundreds of outraged residents took to the streets to protest, including mothers with children strapped to their backs who marched on a makeshift police station. Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa at the time pledged to step up the fight against those responsible for violence against children.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Charges against four of the five men accused of the toddler killings were dropped.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The previous month, a five-year-old girl was found murdered near her home in Diepsloot after it was believed she was raped.\u00a0\u2013 Sapa<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A case of murder is being investigated after a baby who was left alone for the night in a shack was found dead and mutilated by rats,\u00a0Gauteng police said on Monday. &#8220;We have registered a case of murder, but initially it was an inquest,&#8221; Captain Tsekiso Mofokeng said. On Sunday morning, Diepsloot residents raised the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=11645\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Diepsloot baby eaten by rats&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[7358,4645,2863,7359],"class_list":["post-11645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-baby-death","tag-child-neglect","tag-diepsloot","tag-rats"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/rat.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11647,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11645\/revisions\/11647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}