The family of a young woman and her five-year-old son who died in a fire in her apartment in Secunda, Mpumalanga, on Sunday morning, have been hoping for almost two days they will only be missing and will be recovered alive.
Odette Dagnicourt, 33, and her son Jean-Stevens (JS), 5, were found only by police in the rubble of the Boston Street apartment on Tuesday.
Shane Janse van Rensburg, the father of JS and Dagnicourt’s ex-husband, was still shocked and shocked at what happened on Wednesday. He and other family members kept hoping that Dagnicourt and JS were just missing.
“I would like to know how it is possible that the fire department and the police did not find them sooner.”
Janse van Rensburg is a diesel mechanic and lives in nearby Evander. He asked police on Tuesday to look for his son and ex-wife again in the apartment.
Shinene Martins, Van Rensburg’s sister, asked people for help on Sunday and Monday on Facebook to look for JS and his mother. She even wrote on Facebook: “We pray that you are safe and warm and have eaten something. That you are not afraid or hurt. ”
Janse van Rensburg says Dagnicourt went to visit a family member in town on Saturday night. She and JS arrived at the apartment she had rented in the early hours of Sunday.
“We suspect she turned on a heater and it was too close to a blanket that caught fire, but we’re not sure,” says Martins.
The fire department was called to extinguish the flames.
Tyrone Bruwer, 34, a friend of Dagnicourt’s, was also in the apartment. He was admitted to Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg with serious burns.
Janse van Rensburg says it is a mystery how the fire started in the apartment.
“I have no idea what happened.”
He says his heart is broken over his son’s death.
“He was a calm and friendly boy.”
JS was a gr. R student at Secunda Primary School.
