Gunshot residue found on victim’s hands

FORENSIC test results could support an Aranos area farmer’s claim that he was not responsible for firing the shot that ended the life of his wife in their farmhouse in April 2010.

Tests carried out at the National Forensic Science Institute of Namibia (NFSI) showed that gunshot residue was found on the left hand of farmer Willem Visagie Barnard and on both hands of his late wife, Anette Barnard, after the shooting incident that claimed Mrs Barnard’s life during the night of 9 to 10 April 2010, Judge Naomi Shivute was told as Barnard’s trial continued in the Windhoek High Court yesterday.

NFSI director Paul Ludik testified that he analysed the contents of two primer residue evidence collection kits that were sent to the NSFI for testing. One of the samples in one of the kits, marked as containing evidence collected from a suspect, tested positive for gunshot residue in the form of fused particles of the elements lead and antimony, which are characteristic components of the explosive propellant found in firearm bullets, Ludik said.

The sample that gave that positive test result came from the left hand of a suspect, the court heard.

Primer residue was also found in the two samples collected from both the left and the right hand of the deceased in the case, Ludik testified.

It could be of significance that the quantity of gunshot residue detected in the sample from the left hand of the deceased was about three times as much as the concentration of primer residue in the sample taken from her right hand and in the sample from the suspect’s left hand, Ludik said.

The test results mean that it is probable that, of the four hands from which samples were taken, the left hand of the deceased was the closest to the firearm with which she was shot at the critical moment that the fatal shot was fired, Ludik agreed on a question from Barnard’s defence lawyer, Louis Botes. While repeatedly qualifying his answers with the phrase “all things scientifically being equal”, Ludik also agreed that it was probable that the firearm was in the left hand of the deceased when it was fired.

Botes told Ludik during his cross-examination that his client is right-handed, and that Mrs Barnard was shot in the left side of her head, with the fatal bullet exiting her head on the right side.

Mrs Barnard died at the age of 55 after she had been shot at farm Choris between Aranos and Stampriet, where she and her husband lived.

Barnard (61) denied guilt on a charge of murder with the start of his trial on Tuesday last week. In a written plea explanation he denied that he had shot his wife as alleged by the prosecution.

Barnard claimed that as a result of a combination of medication he was taking and alcohol that he consumed during the day and the evening of the incident, he had no memory of some events around the incident.

He said when he awoke in the lounge of their house, where he and his wife had been watching television, he saw Mrs Barnard lying with her head in a pool of blood on a coffee table in front of the couch where they had been sitting. A revolver lay on the floor between him and his wife, he stated. He further said he could not recall having handled the revolver on the night of the incident.

The trial is continuing.

State advocates Palmer Kumalo and Cliff Lutibezi are prosecuting.