Expatica news

Pistorius trial – key points from day 18

An emotional Oscar Pistorius broke down in court as he recounted killing Reeva Steenkamp after he shot, on the second day of testimony in his murder trial.

Here are details of Tuesday’s proceedings:

– Pistorius broke into loud sobs as he described finding the mortally wounded Steenkamp in the toilet cubicle after he shot her.

“I sat over Reeva and I cried. I don’t how long I was there for,” he testified while his voice broke.

“She wasn’t breathing,” he said shaking with loud sobs that prompted an early adjournment for the day.

– The athlete fired four shots at the toilet door thinking an intruder might come out and attack him, when he woke up in the dead of night on Valentines’ Day last year.

“Then I heard a noise from inside the toilet, what I perceived to be someone coming out of the toilet.”

“Before I knew it I’d fired four shots at the door,” he said, his voice breaking.

– When he ran back to the bedroom he discovered Steenkamp was not in bed.

“I felt if Reeva was there and I couldn’t feel anything,” he said.

– Earlier, he testified to locking his bedroom door and barring it with a cricket bat before the couple went to bed the previous night, another reference to his paranoia about crime.

– Pistorius also testified on three other charges against him: firing a gun through a moving car’s sunroof, firing another one in a crowded restaurant, and the possession of unlicensed ammunition.

He denied firing a gun through a car’s sunroof after an altercation with police in 2012, contradicting earlier testimony from two witnesses.

His friend’s gun also went off by accident when Pistorius had a look at it in an upmarket Johannesburg restaurant in 2012.

“We both were to blame,” Pistorius said of his thoughts at the time.

Pistorius kept unlicensed .38-calibre ammunition found in his house safe for his father, he said.

– The Paralympian’s long-awaited testimony on the charges followed almost a day of evidence that showed his difficult past, and on Tuesday the 27-year-old went through messages that portrayed his loving relationship with the aspiring actress and model.

“We started really seeing a future with each other,” he said.