THE OLDER BROTHER of South African olympian and murder defendant Oscar Pistorius is in hospital after being “badly hurt” in a road crash overnight, the family said Saturday.

Carl Pistorius ”was badly hurt but we are thankful that he is out of danger,” family spokeswoman Anneliese Burgess said in a statement.

He had been driving along South Africa’s main N1 highway heading to Pretoria on Friday night when his car was hit head-on by another car that had swerved from the opposite side of the expressway into the oncoming traffic, she said.

Carl was acquitted in May last year of culpable homicide and reckless driving over a fatal crash in 2008 in which his vehicle collided with a motorbike driven by a woman who died in hospital a few days later.

Oscar Pistorius is accused of murdering his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentine’s Day in 2013.

BBC News reports that Carl has been near-constant presence at his younger brother’s murder trial with the athlete describing how how Carl became a “father figure” for himself and his sister after their parents’ marriage broke down and their mother died.

Oscar Pistorius’s trial is set to resume next Thursday for closing arguments.

© – AFP 2014 with additional reporting by Rónán Duffy

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