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‘It’s not about the money’ – Roux
Paralympian Oscar Pistorius's payments to Reeva Steenkamp's family were there to show he wanted to do more to make up for his crime, the High Court in Pretoria heard on Friday.
Oscar Pistorius embraces an unidentified woman in court on day four of sentencing procedures at the High Court in Pretoria, 16 October 2014. Picture: EPA
“It [the payment] is unconditional. He wants to do more,” his lawyer Barry Roux told the court during closing arguments for sentencing.
He was arguing to have his client kept out of prison after he was found guilty of Steenkamp’s culpable homicide.
“It wants to show that there is compassion, that there is emotion, that there is hurt.”
It emerged in court this week that Pistorius had sold his car for R375,000 and given this money to the Steenkamps. He had also paid them R6000 a month between March 2013 and September this year. The Steenkamps had rejected the money.
Roux said Pistorius wanted to “make good”.
“He wants to make good as far as possible.”
On September 12, Judge Thokozile Masipa found Pistorius guilty of the culpable homicide of model and law graduate Steenkamp, but not guilty of her murder. Pistorius had claimed he thought there was a burglar in his toilet when he fired four shots through the locked door in the early hours of February 14 last year, killing Steenkamp.
Masipa found Pistorius guilty of discharging a firearm in public, when he shot from his friend Darren Fresco’s Glock pistol under a table at Tasha’s restaurant in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg, in January 2013.
Pistorius was found not guilty on two firearms-related charges – illegal possession of ammunition, and shooting through the open sunroof of a car with his 9mm pistol while driving with friends in Modderfontein on September 30, 2012.
– Sapa
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