Van Breda emergency call raises key questions

QUESTIONS were buzzing around the High Court in Cape Town yesterday after a chilling call by axe murder accused Henri van Breda to emergency services was played.

Was it a sob or a giggle? Why was he so calm when his family had been so brutally butchered?

It was from the morning of January 27 2015 when his parents and brother lay dead and his sister was fighting for her life.

Call centre operator Janine Philander testified she was convinced Van Breda’s call was a prank because he was “hesitant”‚ “cool as a cucumber”‚ “calmly gave details of the attack”‚ and set the tone early in the conversation with “a giggle”.

She said one in seven calls they received were hoaxes‚ and Van Breda’s demeanour matched those of other pranksters.

Defence counsel Piet Botha argued that those were merely her interpretations‚ and claimed the “giggle” was a stuttered form of the word “please” in one instance‚ and a sob in the other.

Judge Siraj Desai said he “clearly heard” some stuttering during the call‚ but Philander said to her it sounded like “hesitation” and that she heard no trace of stuttering.

Desai pointed out to Botha that it came down to personal interpretation and that Philander was entitled to a different opinion and had answered the questions.

She said the initial moments “set the tone of the whole call” and she felt convinced it was a prank.

“Normally callers who phone in with this type of emergency set the tone. There was no interruption‚ no comeback‚ no getting agitated‚ and he didn’t stop me at any time. He never brought up again in any of the conversations that his whole family had been attacked‚” she said.

Botha remarked to Philander that Van Breda stuttered as a child and had been coached to speak slowly and calmly as a technique to overcome this.

When Botha asked why she told the police to move “quickly” if she didn’t believe it was a real situation‚ she said: “I wanted them to get there and catch him as I still believed he was a prank caller. I wanted them to move fast while he was still there [to arrest him].”

Desai said: “You get 70 to 100 calls a day. What percentage of those are prank calls?”

Looking at stats‚ Philander said: “In a six-month period up to February this year 35 374 crank calls out of 238 000 – about 15%. Those are the ones who stay calm.” — TMG