Student found slain

Police are looking for the boyfriend of a 19-year-old student found dead in her bedroom at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, in Eastern Cape.

The body of Tshepiso "Promise" Sithole, a first-year civil engineering student from Pretoria, was found at her Summerstrand commune.

She was lying on the floor, covered with a blanket. Her arms were stretched above her head. She is thought to have been strangled with a computer cord.

Sithole's death was within about a week of her being seen arguing with her boyfriend, a teacher at the Pretoria high school she had attended.

According to her house-mates, he had been visiting Sithole in Port Elizabeth and the two had an argument on Sunday June 19. She was not seen alive again.

The owner of the Gomery Place communal house, Martin van Niekerk, who lives in a flatlet on the property, made the gruesome discovery after Sithole's worried father, Freddie, sent him an SMS asking him to look in her room. Freddie Sithole had been unable to contact her for the past week.

Van Niekerk used his master key to unlock the bedroom in which the body was found.

Humewood police's Captain Maryke Pretorius, said Van Niekerk was met by a "nasty smell" when he opened the door, prompting him to alert police.

"We have ruled out robbery as only her cellphone and the room key are missing and the door appeared to have been locked from the outside."

Pretorius said Sithole's boyfriend was the last person seen with her at the commune.

"We are attempting to locate the boyfriend but cannot comment further until we have spoken to him," Pretorius said.

Sithole's boyfriend is 31 and a Grade 12 English teacher.

Sithole was one of six students who lived at the commune but most of her house-mates had left for the university holidays.

Two house-mates descried Sithole as "a very quiet" person.

Freddie Sithole said his family was shocked by the news of her death and described her as a "brilliant and great child".

Sithole was the second-eldest of three sisters and, according to her father, had a "passion" for civil engineering.