A young engineering student and e-hailing driver was tragically murdered on the 11th of February. This is the story of love that has surrounded his grieving family.
South Africa (02 March 2026) – This is a profoundly difficult story to tell, but one that highlights the best of humanity in the wake of an absolutely senseless tragedy.
Twenty-two-year-old Isaac David Satlat was just weeks away from graduating as an automobile engineering student. March was meant to be a celebration – his graduation, his 23rd birthday on 12 March, and a long-awaited reunion with his mother and siblings in Nigeria, whom he had not seen in a decade.
Instead, a routine e-hailing trip worth R33 ended in Isaac’s death.
Isaac was transporting two passengers when he was attacked and murdered. His car was later recovered, and his body was found kilometres away in Moshongo, Atteridgeville, outside Pretoria. The loss has shaken fellow students, church members, friends, and strangers who never met him but still cannot stop thinking about him.
Those close to him describe a gentle, driven young man who was building a bright and promising future.
“He was very creative with his hands,” said family spokesperson Solomon Ashooms as per Eyewitness News. “He loved automobile engineering because he loved to create. He was not a complicated person; people who met him loved him.”
His life was moving forward. And then it stopped.
In tragedies like these, when words feel small and grief feels overwhelming, something else often rises to the surface. The givers.
An online crowdfunding campaign was launched to help Isaac’s family cover funeral costs and repatriate his body to Nigeria. Within days, South Africans, and people from across the world, began giving.
Hundreds donated what they could and within two weeks, 106% of the fundraising goal was raised. But the space became more than a place to give…
Messages began to pour in. Some people offered prayers. Others shared heartbreak. Everyone wanted Isaac’s family to know that across cities, countries and continents, people were holding them close in their thoughts.
From a South African living in Europe came this: “Dear Isaac’s family. Please accept my deepest condolences. No family should bury their child like this… I am a South African living in Europe, and my heart broke thinking of how you trusted another country to take care of your son, and you were failed. I hope you know many of us South Africans are weeping with you.”
And from a friend: “We love you isaac and we will fight for you. Continue to look down on us and we’ll definitely make you proud! #justiceforisaacdavid”
There were countless calls for justice. Many prayers. Hundreds of wishes for strength for his family who is experiencing an unspeakably painful loss.
Compassion has crept in far beyond the campaign. When suspects appeared in court, fellow students and e-hailing drivers stood outside court holding placards that read ‘Justice for Isaac.’ They gathered as church communities to pray. They stood up and used their voices to ensure that his name wouldn’t disappear.
Isaac David Satlat was a son. A brother. A friend. A soon-to-be graduate. He was counting down to a reunion with his family. He had plans…
Nothing can undo what happened. Nothing can give his mother back the years she still expected to have with her son.
But because of hundreds of ordinary people and because strangers chose compassion over silence, Isaac will be taken home and his family will be able to lay him to rest with dignity. They will know that, in their darkest moment, they were not alone.
In a story that began with cruelty, the final word has not belonged only to violence but also to compassion.
by 