Pistorius apologizes to victim’s mother
Print Edition
HIS voice trembling with emotion, Oscar Pistorius took the witness stand in his own defense yesterday, saying the Valentine’s Day shooting of his girlfriend last year had left him sleepless, terrified and plagued by nightmares.
The disabled South African track star, on trial for murder, apologized to the mother of Reeva Steenkamp, saying he had fired four times through a toilet door at his luxury Pretoria home in the belief he was defending her from an intruder.
She was hit by at least three rounds, including one to the head that killed her almost instantly, the court heard.
“I was simply trying to protect Reeva,” Pistorius told the Pretoria High Court at the start of his testimony. Reeva’s mother June Steenkamp, sitting stony-faced in the packed public gallery, bowed her head.
The 27-year-old Olympian and Paralympian, who faces life in prison if convicted, said he’d been on anti-depressants and sleeping pills since the shooting.
“I’m scared to sleep. I have terrible nightmares ... I can smell blood. I wake up to being terrified,” he said.
Earlier, during graphic forensic testimony from a defense pathologist, Pistorius retched into a bucket in the dock.
The distraught figure was in stark contrast to the gun-obsessed, fast-living hothead that prosecutors had described in the first 16 days of the trial.
As well as murder, Pistorius is accused of firing a pistol through the sun roof of a friend’s car while on a public road, and discharging a handgun under the table of a packed Johannesburg restaurant.
After pleading not guilty to all charges, his defense hinges on his assertion, made under oath at his bail hearing, that he mistook Steenkamp for an intruder hiding in the toilet and opened fire.
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