Johannesburg - The police officer found stabbed to death in Turffontein on Saturday morning was a colonel in Gauteng's police service, spokesperson Colonel Noxolo Kweza said on Saturday.
His name could not be disclosed as his family was still being notified of his death, she said.
An emotional Kweza told News24 the officer's body was discovered by passers-by along a street late on Friday night, who then alerted police. He was in plain clothes.
She could not say whether he had been robbed.
"We were alerted by members of the community who called the police after they saw a man lying in the street. When we got there we saw him, he was one of us, we know him."
Kweza said the officer was not killed near a McDonalds outlet as previously reported.
"It was not near a McDonalds that it not true, it was far from where he was."
The officer's killing comes less than a week after a gang brazenly shot at police officers on the busy N3 highway near Modderfontein. One police officer died instantly, while another died later in hospital.
A third is in a stable condition in hospital.
On Monday, a day after the highway shooting, a gang inside a truck shot at officers in Kempton Park.
One officer was seriously injured.
News24
