The decomposing body of the 20-year-old daughter of a prominent South African academic was found in a New York University housing complex this week, the Times of London reported on Wednesday.
The victim, identified as Boitumelo ”Tumi” McCallum, was found wrapped in a sheet and her face, swaddled in a bloody towel, had reportedly suffered ”blunt trauma”, the newspaper’s online site said.
Her body was found in staff housing in Greenwich Village after her flatmates reported a foul smell on Sunday night.
The New York Times website reported on Wednesday that McCallum’s boyfriend was taken into custody on Tuesday night after he slit his wrists and later made statements implicating himself in her death.
The police said he made statements to hospital workers who were treating him, implicating himself in McCallum’s death. Charges had not yet been determined, the report said.
McCallum was last reported alive early on Thursday after a party in her flat, and had logged in to her MySpace page on Thursday, the newspaper wrote.
She was positively identified after the South African consulate provided fingerprints from her passport.
McCallum’s body was found in a locked bedroom on the floor between a bed and the wall in her mother’s flat.
McCallum’s mother, Teboho Moja, is a professor of higher education at New York University’s Steinhardt School.
Her father, Robert McCallum, is an adjunct professor in the Steinhardt School’s art department.
According to the Steinhardt School’s website, Moja is a former executive director of South Africa’s National Commission on Higher Education.
She was also a special adviser to the minister of education, a former chairperson of the board of trustees to the University of South Africa, and serves on the board of the Unesco Institute for International Education Planning.
Moja was in South Africa on a foreign study programme when she learnt of her daughter’s death, the Times said.
McCallum moved to New York as a young child.
A spokesperson for South Africa’s Foreign Affairs Department, Manusha Pillai, said the matter was being followed up. — Sapa