‘I took the knife out of my body’: What Henri van Breda told police
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It took three weeks to collect blood samples from the Van Breda home‚ a crime scene investigator told the High Court in Cape Town on Thursday.
Andre Hitchcock‚ one of three investigators‚ took the court through the modus operandi of his team‚ describing the painstaking work of collecting the evidence from 12 Goske Street‚ at the luxury De Zalze estate in Stellenbosch‚ where three members of the Van Breda family were axed to death.
“It is the most blood samples I have ever had to take on a crime scene‚” he said‚ recalling the days that followed the murders on January 27‚ 2015.
Earlier‚ Van Breda’s statement to the police from the morning his family was killed was admitted as evidence in his trial by Judge Siraj Desai.
The 22-year-old stands accused of being the one who swung the axe that took the lives of his parents and brother‚ and nearly killed his sister.
After a hard-fought battle in a trial-within-a-trial‚ his defence counsel‚ Piet Botha‚ accepted that the statement Van Breda made to police cannot be scratched from the record.
The question now looming is why he wanted it scratched‚ but this likely to only emerge later in the trial.
In the statement‚ Van Breda details how he drank two glasses of red wine and a whiskey with his family at supper‚ and later‚ a rum and Coke alone.
After everyone had gone to bed on January 26‚ he says‚ he “heard a noise” while he was “in the toilet”.
“I opened the toilet door slightly and saw in the dark that someone was hitting Rudi. I then stand [sic] afraid to go out of the toilet. I then started to shout for help‚” he says.
He was “standing in the bedroom with the lights on looking of [sic] what is happening in front of me. My father then collapsed in my room where this person was attacking him.”
He also details a scuffle with the alleged attacker‚ and notes‚ “I took the knife out of my body that was still stuck inside my body.”
He describes how he “fainted” and then “woke up” and again saw “my sister and my mother in the passageway lying on the ground and I can see that my mother was not moving and my sister was still moving and she also was breathing.”
The case has been adjourned to Monday.
TMG Digital/TimesLIVE
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