Our Star of the Week is Hilma Ujaha, 29, who found the five-year-old girl who was kidnapped and raped by 50-year-old Jeremia van Wyk, last week. The girl was found at a bar along Shanghai Street in Wambo location. Ujaha realised it was the same girl reported as missing on social media.
Ujaha said she approached the girl who was sitting on a brick in the corner of the bar next to a man around 21h00.
Ujaha had spotted the little girl earlier as she passed by them when she left for the shop at approximately sunset. Ujaha had not left home in four months after her business closed down. She had been indoors and hardly left the house. She normally sends her younger brother to run errands for her.
However, on this day, Ujaha decided she would walk to the service station at around 18h00 to buy a few items that she needed.
As Ujaha passed the bar at their house, she saw the girl next to Van Wyk. The suspect was consuming alcohol and he looked drugged. According to Ujaha and information she later gathered, Van Wyk was not a regular at the bar and it appeared it was his first time there.
When Ujaha returned home from the shop she took her cellphone which she had left behind and saw a photo of the missing girl circulating on WhatsApp. Ujaha thought to herself the girl in the photo looked familiar.
She then left the house again after receiving a call from a friend who was outside. This time she approached the girl. “I greeted her and asked her what is your name and she mentioned it and it matched the one on the post circulating.
“I panicked and started screaming, ‘People are looking for this child, what are you doing with the child here?’ I went into the house and called the number on the post and the police,” Ujaha told New Era.