Oscar Pistorius makes low-key arrival

Unlike Monday, he was not accompanied by police officers, and caught media waiting outside the court off-guard.

“So when did he stop? How did he just zoom past?” a photographer asked.

A man who came to the court to see Pistorius said: “That was so quick. I almost missed it.”

The paralympian walked into the court room by himself.

Earlier a man carrying a noose stood outside the court. He did not want to give his name, but said he was there to highlight the country’s justice system.

“The death penalty was in South Africa for a long time,” he said.

“The justice system must give harsher sentences. That’s the bottom line,” he said before leaving.

On September 12, Pistorius was convicted of culpable homicide for the Valentine’s Day 2013 shooting of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in his Pretoria townhouse. The court found him not guilty of murder.

Pistorius shot Steenkamp through the locked door of the toilet, apparently thinking she was an intruder about to emerge and attack him. She was hit in the hip, arm, and head.

On Monday, Steenkamp’s parents June and Barry were in court as the defence called three witnesses – the athlete’s psychologist Lore Hartzenberg, his manager Petrus Van Zyl and correctional services department social worker Mashaba Joel Maringa.

Prosecutor Gerrie Nel asked for a postponement to go over documents handed in by Van Zyl before he cross-examined him.

The manager told the court on Monday about Pistorius’s planned retirement in 2017, before the shooting, and his involvement with various charities.

On Tuesday morning, media gathered at the entrance as they waited for Pistorius, his family and Steenkamp’s family and friends.

School children, dressed in uniform walked past, and some stopped to look at the cameras before walking on.

Pistorius was found guilty of firing a pistol under a table at Tasha’s restaurant in Johannesburg in January 2013 and not guilty of shooting through the open sunroof of a car in Modderfontein on September 30, 2012.

– Sapa

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