A pathologist could not tell from Nelson Chisale’s broken bones whether he was dead or alive when thrown into a lions’ den in January 2004, the Phalaborwa Circuit Court heard on Tuesday.
Every one of the human bones brought to Dr Donald Mabunda in a plastic evidence bag for a post-mortem examination was broken, he told Justice George Maluleke and assessors Kate Choshi and Elphus Seemela.
”There was no flesh on the bones at all,” Mabunda told the court.
He had never before seen such bones. Car accidents would not break every one of a person’s bones, nor would gunshots.
”Whatever caused the death was targeting the whole human being, basically … Whatever killed him wanted the flesh more than the bones, and had all the flesh from the bones,” Mabunda testified.
Told that the bones were recovered in a lions’ camp, he concluded the cause of Chisale’s death was that he was mauled by lions.
Among the bones was a skull, part of a tibia, a fibula and ribs. He found no marks other than some scratches on the skull. While these could have been caused during the mauling, it was equally possible they were caused by an instrument such as a panga, he conceded in cross-examination.
Mabunda was testifying in the trial of Mark Scott-Crossley (37), Richard ”Doctor” Mathebula (41) and Simon Mathebula (43), who have all pleaded not guilty of murdering Chisale by feeding him to lions near Hoedspruit after severely assaulting him on January 31 2004.
Investigating officer Inspector David Hlatshwayo said on Monday that Simon Mathebula had told him he ”chopped” Chisale with a panga on his head, and Richard Mathebula beat him with a stick when he fought back when they tried to arrest him after catching him on the Scott-Crossley smallholding.
”He couldn’t tell me how many times he used the panga. There was no time to count. It was during a fight. They were busy,” Hlatshwayo told the court.
”He did tell me that the person was bleeding and that some of the blood fell on his clothing: the two-piece overall he had on,” he responded to a question under cross-examination by Johann Engelbrecht SC, counsel for Scott-Crossley.
He was told by Simon Mathebula that after the assault he and Richard Mathebula pinned down Chisale and then tied him up to a tree using wires and ropes, while they waited for Scott-Crossley to arrive, Hlatshwayo testified. — Sapa