Pretoria Hairdresser found strangled to death

PRETORIA - Well-known Pretoria hair-salon owner Alden Smith, 37, was strangled to death in the passenger seat of his Audi A3, found parked at the Superspar shop in Menlopark on Christmas Day. The businessman had recently exposed the extortion practices of the Pretoria Metropolitan Police on the TV programme Carte Blanche on the Mnet channel in South Africa.

Hilda Fourie of Beeld wrote that murdered hairdresser Alden Smith had spent Christmas day with his sister Onica Jakob, and her husband Chris, in Wonderboom. He left around 17:15 in his Audi, which according to police had been stolen a month earlier and recovered by the police.

Brig André Wiese, the Brooklyn police station commander who heads the investigation said they don’t exactly know the circumstances of Smith’s death as yet. ‘One possibility being examined is that Smith was attacked and kidnapped at his house in Charles Street and then driven to the ATM cash-withdrawal point in Menlopark”. He was seated on the passenger seat, strangled to death, when a police patrol found him.

That same Christmas evening at around 22:30 the alarm had gone off at Smith’s hair salon next to his home and the security company had contacted his sister – who also works at her brother’s salon – because the company was unable to contact Mr Smith. Mr Jakob drove to the salon while Mrs Jakob kept trying from home to contact him on his cellphone. “What we didn’t know was that he was already dead by that time,’ she said. "I will never forget how I saw my brother in that car. His glasses were broken and his shoes were stolen off his feet. Through something like this everyone's life is devastated. For me it is not yet true."