Nel probes Pistorius’s bail statement
Prosecutor Gerrie Nel probed a disparity between paralympian Oscar Pistorius's testimony and his bail statement during his murder trial in the High Court in Pretoria on Wednesday.
State prosecutor Gerrie Nel cross-examines paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius during his murder trial at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria on Wednesday, 9 April 2014. Pistorius sobbed in the witness stand on Tuesday as he described how, gripped by fear, he shot dead his girlfriend through a locked toilet door thinking she was an intruder. Picture: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters/Pool
Before the lunch break Pistorius conceded that his bail statement which said that he went onto the first floor balcony of his townhouse to bring a fan into his bedroom was incorrect.
“I admit that it’s incorrect,” he said during cross-examination by Nel.
Pistorius admitted that only one leg of a fan on a tripod was on the balcony tiles. The other two legs were on the carpet of his bedroom. A second fan was in front of it, on his bedroom carpet.
Nel asked him why he suddenly changed this aspect of his bail statement.
“I wasn’t there when my statement got drawn up. I wasn’t the one who drew it up. My counsel advised me that it doesn’t have to be an exhaustive set of facts,” he said.
Pistorius said he brought the fans into his bedroom in the early hours of February 14 last year, shortly before he shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp through a locked toilet door, apparently thinking she was an intruder.
He found her slumped over the toilet after he broke the door down. She was shot in the hip, arm, and head.
The athlete is charged with murder and with contraventions of the Firearms Control Act. He allegedly fired a shot from a Glock pistol under a table at a Johannesburg restaurant in January 2013.
On September 30, 2012 he allegedly shot through the open sunroof of a car with his 9mm pistol while driving with friends in Modderfontein.
– Sapa
