Doctor unable to help, Oscar tells court
The first doctor to arrive at the scene of Reeva Steenkamp's killing appeared overwhelmed and unable to help, paralympian Oscar Pistorius told the High Court in Pretoria on Wednesday.
Members of the gallery react as Whats App messages from paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius are read out in court by Pistorius during his ongoing murder trial in Pretoria on Tuesday, 8 April 2014. Pistorius stands trial for the premeditated murder of Steenkamp in February 2013. Picture: Kim Ludbrook/EPA/Pool
“I looked up and saw Dr Stipp. I was crying for him to help me, to help Reeva, but it didn’t seem like he knew what he was doing. He seemed overwhelmed by the situation,” he told the court, prompted by his lawyer Barry Roux.
Johan Stipp, a resident in the Silver Woods estate, Pretoria, previously testified for the State that he found Steenkamp already dead on the ground floor of Pistorius’s townhouse and Pistorius kneeling at her side. Pistorius had his fingers in her mouth in an attempt to help her breathe and his other hand on the bullet wound on her hip.
Pistorius shot Steenkamp, apparently thinking she was an intruder, through the locked door of his toilet on February 14 last year. He found her slumped over the toilet. She was shot in the hip, arm, and head.
After a few moments Stipp got up and walked out.
“I was shouting for him to come back into the house and help me,” Pistorius said.
Soon after paramedics arrived and asked for space to work on Steenkamp. Pistorius went into the kitchen.
“The paramedic came to me and said to me that she would like to inform me that Reeva had passed.”
Pistorius spoke looking at Judge Thokozile Masipa, often pausing.
The athlete is also charged 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
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