Durban – Violent shaking sheared small blood vessels in the brain of former Royal Marine Brett Williams and caused a blood clot that killed him, the Durban Regional Court heard on Thursday.
“His head must have been shaken around violently. It was probably a violent and sudden shaking of the head that caused it,” said Dr Ashley Hammond, who conducted the autopsy on March 28, five days after the assault.
He was testifying in the case of four men accused of beating Williams to death after a rugby match last year.
Hammond told the court he found two incidents of bleeding in the left temple area of Williams’s brain, and a blood clot in the ventricles.
“It’s a space right in the centre of the brain.”
He said that while the bleeding in the temple area – identified as subdural and subarachnoid bleeding – could have led to Williams’ death, he believed it was the blood clot in the ventricles that would have caused his death within 25 to 30 minutes of forming.
He said the “shearing or rupturing of the small blood vessels” would have led to the clot forming. There was no indication that Williams had any other injuries to his head, and his skull was not fractured.
Williams had abrasions on his knees and elbows, but there were no injuries to his torso. His kidneys, liver, spleen and ribs were all intact.
Blayne Shepard, 23, his brother Kyle, 25, along with Andries van der Merwe, 23, and Dustin van Wyk, 23, each face a charge of murder, three of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, and one of crimen injuria.
They are accused of beating Williams to death outside King’s Park stadium on the night of March 23 last year, after the Sharks beat the Melbourne Rebels in a Super Rugby match.
Before the final attack, Williams had been in fight with Grant Cramer, a friend of Blayne Shepard. During that scuffle, Cramer held Williams in a choke hold before dropping him to the tar unconscious.
Hammond said that when he examined Williams’s body there was evidence of cyanosis to the neck and head.
Cyanosis is the appearance of blue or purple colouration to the skin, from a lack of oxygen.
“He was probably held around the neck,” said Hammond, but he did not believe this had anything to do with Williams’s death.
“The cause of death is a head injury,” he said.
The court also heard from a witness that Williams was not the aggressor in the attack.
Kim de Villiers, who was co-ordinating the Buddies Designated Drivers operation near the stadium’s outer fields, said he had seen Williams and Cramer having words.
At that stage, Williams did not seem to want to engage in a confrontation, and then Cramer said to him, “What did you say? I will f**k you up.”
De Villiers said that Williams, realising he couldn’t escape the confrontation, punched Cramer and a fight ensued. He saw that Cramer had Williams in a stranglehold, and he (De Villiers) went across to Cramer’s girlfriend and asked her to ask Cramer to stop.
Soon afterwards, Cramer released Williams and he fell to the ground.
“At that point, I went right up to the deceased… and said, ‘Are you alright?’”
Williams did not respond because he had blacked out.
Asked to comment about Cramer’s testimony that Williams was aggressive and that Cramer was defending himself, De Villiers said he did not agree with that.
“That’s not what I saw. It was the other way around,” he said.
The trial continues.