Shock and horror still resonates through the Cape Town suburb of Tokai, Monday’s murder of Franziska Blöchliger causing mass outpourings of emotion from parents and children alike.

Last night saw a silent sunset vigil take place at Tokai Forest, mourners marching in solidarity with the family. Some images from that vigil below:

Her parents have now offered a R50 000 reward for any information that leads to the arrest of the perpetrator, with her father describing the events as follows on TimesLive:

Surrounded by Franziska’s grieving relatives and friends at their Muizenberg home, the couple relived their ordeal, which began on Monday afternoon when Shireen and Franziska drove to Tokai.

They arrived 30 minutes before a bus from the German School in Cape Town was due to drop off Franziska’s younger sister, Sofia, and the teenager decided to run a 5km circuit of the forest.

“After 30 minutes Franziska wasn’t back. My wife was getting anxious, the bus was coming and she didn’t want the little girl to stand at the bus, waiting, so she called me,” said Florian.

He drove to Tokai and after a search yielded no trace of their daughter they called the police.

While riding on his scooter along the forest paths calling out to his daughter, Florian received a call from her cellphone.

“I shouted ‘Where are you?’ only to hear children’s noises in the background, like a screaming child, not my child, somebody else’s child. And after about 30 seconds the phone was put down.

“I got hysterical. I went back and told the police what happened. My father called me and said Fran-ziska’s phone also phoned him and the same thing happened to him as well.”

Twenty minutes after police arrived about 100 people came out to help with the search. Franziska’s body was found in fynbos at the edge of the forest.

The phone was last tracked by police to nearby Westlake at 9pm on Monday.

Here’s the full interview Franziska’s parents gave to EWN:

We can only hope the manhunt catches this barbarian before another family has to endure this kind of horror.

[sources:timeslive,iol,ewn]