The father of a murdered man told Belfast Crown Court yesterday how he "fell to my knees" when he was confronted with the sight of his battered son.
Mr Patrick Gault described how he ran to his son's Audley Avenue home in Lisburn when a neighbour phoned him to say there had been a burglary and that there was an ambulance outside. Mr Gault's son Paul (34) was bludgeoned to death with a hockey stick in his bedroom in May 2000.
Denying his murder is his wife, Mrs Lesley Gault (34), and her lover, Mr Graham Gordon (40), from Wheatfield, Ballygowan.
The Crown Court jury have been told that it is the prosecution case that Mr Gordon murdered Mr Gault "with the connivance" of his lover and then ransacked the house to make it look like a burglary gone wrong.
Yesterday Mr Gault snr told prosecuting QC Mr Patrick Lynch that he "pulled" his way through two police officers to get to where his son lay: "I fell to my knees to my son and I grabbed him and lifted him."
With his voice breaking, he added that as he lifted his dead son, "his head just fell forward" and he could see that his skull had been caved in. As he described the scene in the blood-spattered bedroom, Mrs Gault sat in the dock holding her head in her hands. Beside her, Mr Graham looked straight ahead.
The court heard that after he had been gently persuaded away from the body by police, Mr Gault was taken to a neighbour's house where his daughter-in-law was waiting."She was sitting on the settee and jumped up screaming that she wanted to go in," claimed Mr Gault.
The trial continues.