A FIFO worker has told the trial of a man accused of murdering four people in Darwin that he found the first victim slumped in a shower with a frypan.

September 24, 2021

After a gunman accused of murdering four people rampaged through a Darwin motel, FIFO worker Mark MacKenzie searched rooms looking for survivors.

Mr MacKenzie said he entered a small flat at the rear of the property.

Slumped in the shower was caretaker Hassan Baydoun, 33, the first man Benjamin Glenn Hoffmann allegedly murdered on the afternoon of June 4, 2019.

“He was holding a heavy frypan but it was resting on his lap by that stage,” Mr MacKenzie told Hoffmann’s murder trial in the Northern Territory Supreme Court on Thursday.

“I called the police from that room while I was actually looking at him.”

The court has heard Hoffmann was allegedly high on drugs at the time and searching for a woman he believed was his girlfriend, Kelly Collins.

He was also trying to find a man who’s been described to jurors as a “pimp” and “drug dealer” named Alex Deligiannis, with whom Ms Collins has been linked.

That search also took him to room 15 at the motel, where Cameron Ehling was snoozing with his girlfriend Damita Jerome.

As a “mean” looking man tried to shoot his way into the room, the couple hid behind a bed as shotgun pellets peppered the walls.

“We laid there terrified, listening to the screaming and the yelling and then a second shot was let off through the door,” Mr Ehling said.

“I could hear the acoustics and the echoing from the gunshot reverberate around the room.

“I could smell the gunpowder.”

A third gunshot blew the doorknob off before the fourth and final shot tore through the door and Hoffmann allegedly forced his way into the room.

Mr Ehling pushed Ms Jerome deeper into the space the pair had been hiding and knelt with his hands raised above his head.

“(The gunman) was standing about four feet away from me. He had the shotgun pointed at my chest,” he said.

“He slowly raised it a little bit higher. I couldn’t tell you if it was at my face or if it was at my neck.”

Mr Ehling said he told the man his name and that he hadn’t “wronged anybody” and didn’t owe anybody money.

“We looked in each other’s eyes from eye to eye for what felt like an eternity. And he just simply said to me, ‘You’re f***ing lucky then’ before walking off.”

Hoffmann, 47, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to four counts of murder and 10 other serious charges, including threatening to kill and recklessly endangering the lives of other people he came across during the afternoon of June 4.

Nigel Hellings, 75, Michael Sisois, 57, and Rob Courtney, 52, were the other men who died.

The trial continues on Friday.