Body of missing Tuks student found

A worker at a timber company has made a grisly discovery when he stumbled across the body of Pretoria University student Duncan Allan.

Allan, from Brooklyn, in Pretoria, was reported missing on July 25 when he failed to turn up for his lectures.

A search for the BCom student ended tragically yesterday when Johnston Maguta, 29, found Allan's body inside his Jetta on a farm about 300m from Lynnwood Road, Pretoria East.

It is thought that he gassed himself in the car on the day that he disappeared.

Maguta said he spotted the car on Monday at about 10.30am when his team started harvesting timber in the active part of the Klipkop Farm.

"I thought it belonged to other people working on the farm but I got suspicious when I saw it again today [Tuesday] at about 7.30am," he said.

"I thought it might have been abandoned by criminals but something urged me to move closer and when I was about 5m away I was hit by a strong stench.

"I saw a pipe leading from the exhaust into the front passenger window. The gap created by the pipe between the window glass and the door frame was sealed with masking tape, apparently to stop gas leaking from the car."

Maguta said efforts to alert the police were unsuccessful but he remembered a flyer posted at a local petrol station about a missing student.

"I took down the registration number of the vehicle and the make and walked to the petrol station to compare the information. Everything matched," he said. He called the cellphone number on the flyer, and Allan's father, Tim, answered the phone.

"He wanted to know if I saw the car or his son and I told him that I saw both. He asked if he was alive but sadly I had to tell him the truth, that he was dead."