Reeva’s death was like the ‘end of the world’ – cousin

Martin told the court during sentencing proceedings for Oscar Pistorius that she heard a report on the car radio about him shooting dead his girlfriend.

“I said ‘I hope to God he’s cheating on Reeva’,” an emotional Martin said to questions from prosecutor Gerrie Nel.

“I had no idea. I was just praying that it wasn’t Reeva.”

She said after they heard the news on the radio she started screaming and told her husband to turn the car around.

“I got on my phone and I tried to phone her and she wasn’t answering and I started screaming.”

She said her husband told her to calm down until they knew who the woman in shooting was.

When they arrived at her mother’s house and she saw that she was hysterical, Martin knew it was Steenkamp.

“And it was, for me, the end of the world. Everything was a blur from there onwards,” she said.

Martin said her mother said she spoke to Steenkamp’s mother June, who told her it was Reeva.

She said she flew out to Port Elizabeth to be with Steenkamp’s parents Barry and June.

“My aunt was hysterical… My uncle sat in the corner crying, crying, crying,” she said.

“Uncle Barry’s health has suffered quite a bit.”

She said she could see signs of stress and trauma on June, but they remained strong and wanted to maintain their dignity.

“I think they are very strong people to cope with what they have to cope with.”

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

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.

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