An American college student has been found dead after going missing on a hike in South Africa, where she was doing an internship with a human rights NGO.
Brook Cheuvront, 20, a student at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, was due home from Devil’s Peak in Table Mountain National Park near Cape Town at 6pm on Saturday local time but never returned.
Her body was found at 2pm the next day and retrieved by an emergency services helicopter. An autopsy will be conducted to determine her cause of death, and the South African Police Service said an inquest has been launched.
Brook’s devastated father Steve Cheuvront wrote on Facebook: “Please take down all posts looking for Brook. She was recovered. We are devastated. God help me and us.”
Ms Cheuvront was doing an internship with South Africa-based human rights organisation Justice Desk Africa, which aims to “to challenge and eliminate the root causes of injustice”.
Just a week before she death she posted on Instagram about working for the NGO’s Australian government-supported “gender based violence” program.
“Last week I had my first week of work with the Justice Desk in the Ntsika ye Themba program, which aims to educate young boys on gender based violence and toxic masculinity with the goal of empowering them to be activists and role models in their communities,” she wrote, adding that she had also been for her first hike on Table Mountain.
The mountain is one of Cape Town’s most popular tourist spots, but a surge in violent muggings on hiking trails in recent years has resulted in warnings to visitors not to hike in groups of less than four people.
There were at least 80 robberies in 2023 alone, and in January this year a mugger fell to his death after being pepper sprayed by one of his victims.
Header image: Brook Cheuvront, left and right (Facebook)
