Gasps at Van Breda axe-killing details

Whether or not Henri van Breda axed his parents and brother to death, he relived the horror of the aftermath yesterday through the eyes of veteran paramedic Christiaan Koegelenberg.

Testifying in Van Breda's triple murder trial in the Cape Town High Court, Koegelenberg described the "waterfall" of blood that descended the stairs as he moved Marli van Breda, who survived the January 2015 attack.

Koegelenberg described how he was led by police into the Van Breda family home at De Zalze Estate in Stellenbosch to find everything "deurmekaar" [jumbled].

Henri was sitting with a small dog called Sahsa when Koegelenberg was told there were four victims in the house.

Climbing the stairs, he came across two of them.

• No indication of anyone – or even an animal - gaining access to the estate where triple axe murder occurred‚ court hearsHenri van Breda's defence counsel is honing in on holes made by animals under the fence at the luxury De Zalze estate where three members of the accused's family were hacked to death in 2015.

"I saw one was still alive. I went to the first two victims and my colleague went to the other two."

Police took pictures and then the blood from Marli's wounds "flowed like a waterfall to the bottom of the stairs" as he and a colleague moved the 16-year-old.

"In my 39 years of service this is one of the worst incidents I have ever seen," said Koegelenberg.

Members in the public gallery, including the Van Breda family, looked down in shock as gruesome photographs were shown in court.

Earlier, an unsuspecting buck, and possibly its friend, became a digital exhibit as Piet Botha, Van Breda's defence counsel, shared footage from infrared cameras at De Zalze that showed a buck on one side of the fence at the luxury estate and later on the other side.

• There were no breaches of estate’s security perimeter‚ says witness in Van Breda triple murder trialA state witness‚ De Zalze security manager Marcia Rossouw‚ has so far thrown cold water on the defence's case of an intruder being behind the triple axe murders for which Henri van Breda is currently in the dock - but she is yet to be cross-examined.

"The buck could have got over the fence without triggering the alarm," argued Botha.

But Judge Siraj Desai said there was no way of knowing if it was the same buck.

Witness Marcia Rossouw, security manager at De Zalze, said there were many animals in the area.

Botha also showed footage of a 2013 incident in which a panga-wielding man tried to get through the fence, but was thwarted by guards who had seen him on thermal camera.

After showing a video of cars driving through the boom at Kleine Zalze restaurant, which is close to the estate, Botha asked Rossouw: "Can you see it is nonsense that a record is kept of every car that comes and goes into the estate?"

The case continues today.