Shocking details of how a young man was beaten to death in Jeffreys Bay before his body was dragged 90m to the back of a building and then dumped emerged for the first time in the Port Elizabeth High Court on Wednesday.The family of Jonathan Zane Hayward, 29, the son of a former policeman in the area, was not in court as his two alleged assailants pleaded not guilty to the vicious murder on the first day of trial.Charges of murder and robbery with aggravating circumstances against a third accused, Montevino Zeeland, 19, were withdrawn shortly before the trial got under way.Renaldo Kamoetoe, 27, and Remeo Booysen, 21, both of Jeffreys Bay, allegedly accosted Hayward as he emerged from a sports bar in the area late on a Friday night, on April 28 2017.His body was discovered by a passerby the next morning – about 90m from the spot of the initial attack – between a bottle store and a safe house in Dolphin Street, Pellsrus.The police were alerted, and emergency services declared him dead on the scene.State advocate Garth Baartman told the court that a postmortem report showed Hayward had been beaten with a stone and glass bottle and died from blunt force trauma to the head and face.In the case of a conviction, Baartman said, the prosecution would ask for the prescribed minimum sentence of life imprisonment.Warrant Officer Melissa Sinden, of the SA Police Service’s Criminal Record Centre, said she was contacted by Jeffreys Bay police shortly before 8am on April 29 2017 and informed that there had been a murder.She arrived at the crime scene at 8.25am.“The crime scene was pointed out to me by another officer already present,” Sinden told acting judge Olaf Ronaasen.She said she noticed blood on the cement floor outside the sports club and then drag marks leading to the back of Big Daddy’s Liquor Store and Joshua Project, a safe haven for vulnerable children in the area.She said that was where she discovered the body, among broken bottle necks.A pair of trousers belonging to Hayward was lying next to his arm, apparently stripped off him as the men ransacked him for valuables.Sinden said there were also possible shoe marks on his upper body.The state claims Hayward was known to the accused.They allegedly demanded money from him and then assaulted him before dragging him to a spot where they stripped him naked and searched him further.Sinden photographed the scene and then returned at night to once again take photographs for a police album.The three men were arrested on April 30 2017 and have been in custody since.Defence attorney Robyn O’Brien, representing Kamoetoe, said the pictures – taken at night – were extremely dark and that unless standing very close to the perpetrator, it would be extremely difficult to identity someone in the poor light.Sinden agreed. Kamoetoe and Booysen opted not to give plea explanations at this stage.Meanwhile, Zeeland’s family, seated in the gallery, sobbed as Ronaasen told him that the state had opted to withdraw the charges against him and he was accordingly free to go.They embraced one another as the court orderly let him out of the dock.The trial continues.