Assistant police commissioner Oupa Khumalo also said he had

been sprayed with teargas while attending an earlier soccer match

at the stadium.

The same individual who allegedly ordered teargas to be used in

April was responsible for spraying him at the earlier occasion,

Khumalo said.

He was giving evidence in Pretoria in the inquiry into the April 11

stampede that claimed the lives of 34 people. More than 100 others

were injured.

Khumalo, head of crime intelligence in Gauteng, testified he

attended a match between Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs at

Ellis Park some time ago, probably around 1999.

After the game, guards from a private security company

prevented Premier Soccer League security staff from going back

into the stadium.

When Khumalo tried to reason with the private guards, a white

man with an eyepatch sprayed him with teargas.

Khumalo identified Louis Kruger as the culprit.

Earlier, it was testified that Kruger had given the order for teargas

to be used during the April 11 match. Kruger denied this in his

testimony.

Khumalo said he attended the later match in his private capacity.

While moving around the stadium in an effort to get in, he detected

a faint smell of teargas.

Meanwhile, Professor Hendrik Johannes Scholtz told the Commission that there was no way to determine whether the victims of the Ellis

Park disaster had inhaled any teargas

Professor Scholtz from the University of the

Witwatersrand, who performed the post mortems on seven of the

43 victims and oversaw the rest, said the gas was broken down

immediately when it reached the bloodstream, and was therefore

not detectable.

He said it could be detected on clothes, but he and his team had

received the bodies unclothed.

Besides the 43 fatalities, more than 100 people were injured in a

stampede during a Kaizer Chiefs-Orlando Pirates match at the Ellis

Park Stadium in Johannesburg on April 11 this year.

In earlier testimony, claims were made that teargas was used to

control the crowds that tried to get into the stadium to see the

match.

Asked whether any of the surviving patients at the Helen Joseph

Hospital complained about or were treated for tear gas inhalation,

Scholtz said nothing of the sort was not noted in patient records.

In the case of those whose who perished, the cause of death

was either traumatic asphyxia, when severe pressure to the chest

prevented breathing, or a lesser version, called splinting of the

chest.

He said that in his opinion, none of the injuries sustained by

those who died or were taken to hospital suggested that the people

had fallen from a height.

Most of the 26 patients treated at the Johannesburg Hospital

sustained bruises. There were only a few more serious cases, like

fractured ribs, as well as a broken elbow and little finger, Scholtz

testified.

The inquiry, held at the Pretoria High Court, continues on

Wednesday.