A Cape Town man was stabbed to death on his birthday in the early of hours of Thursday morning.
The body of Heinrich Caroulus, 36, was found next to the railway tracks metres away from the Buttskop Road level crossing in Blackheath.
It is where Transport Minister Blade Nzimande arrived yesterday morning to meet the media and announce the findings of a preliminary investigation into the train accident last Friday that claimed the lives of seven men.
Heinrich’s relatives say he was killed while walking home from a local pub about 2am, where he was celebrating his 36th birthday.
His uncle, Andrew le Roux, said Heinrich was visiting family in Blackheath and lived in Lavender Hill.
Police spokesman, Captain FC van Wyk, says the body was discovered at 6.10am.
“A murder case was registered for investigation,” he says.
Meanwhile, Blackheath residents told Nzimande that over the past four decades, 27 people had died at the Buttskop crossing and urged authorities to put more safety measures in place.
On Friday, the driver of a bakkie carrying seven Food Lovers Market workers were hit by train.
Metrorail deemed the incident “a human error”, saying their booms were operational.
It said after a taxi crossed the railway line, the bakkie driver tried to follow suit, but was too slow and was hit by the train.
Railway safety regulators told Nzimande CCTV footage from the City would shed light on what had happened.
Richard Walker, the regional head for the Public Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa), said they were considering building a bridge or to reconstruct the road.
“We have a road overall project where we want to build a bridge.This is probably the solution in the long run,” he said.
But Nzimande called for immediate action.
Referring to the August 2010 accident in which 10 schoolchildren died after their driver, Jacob Humphreys, ignored signals and crossed the tracks colliding with a train, he said: “This is proving to be a slaughter place. Why can’t we do something quicker?”
He added that “our engineering must discourage” drivers from ignoring booms.
The Road Accident Fund team informed Nzimande that arrangements were being made to transport the bodies of the dead workers back to their homes in Zimbabwe and Zambia.