Witnesses at the Dennis Oland murder trial Wednesday described a horrific scene as they spoke about their experience inside Richard Oland's office.
The Saint John businessman was killed more than seven years ago and Chris Wall and Phil Comeau were the paramedics dispatched to Oland's uptown office in July of 2011.
As they climbed the stairs, Comeau says there was an overwhelming odour.
“A lot of times we go to a death scene, there's an odour, a lingering odour,” Comeau said. “We call it the smell of death.”
Entering the office, the scene, it got a lot worse.
“He was lying on the floor,” Comeau said. “There was a pool of blood around him.”
At the time, Comeau was a 20-year veteran, but his partner was relatively new to the job.
“I was in shock,” Wall told the court. “It was the first time I’d ever seen that.”
Wall described an office floor as having “an extreme amount of blood. I would do whatever I could not to step in the blood.”
Comeau said his training and experience kicked in.
“Realizing this was a potential crime scene, I left the same way I came in,” he said.
On Wednesday, Dennis Oland’s defence lawyers focused on what police did or did not do. They pointed out the flaws in their efforts to protect the crime scene, search the immediate area of the crime scene, and also search beyond the crime scene into the Kennebecasis Valley.
Const. Mike Horgan is now retired, but at the time he was a police-dog handler.
Horgan says he and the dog searched the back door and back alley area in the afternoon after the body was found inside. The dog did not pick up any human scent.
This is the area that a defence re-enactment video suggests, could have been the killers escape route.
In the days that followed, Horgan also participated in searches around Dennis Oland’s Rothesay property and in the Renforth wharf area.
Horgan says police were searching for evidence, including for the murder weapon. That search, came up empty.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Mike Cameron.
