Barking dogs, memory recall tested – Oscar Trial

Annette Stipp was being cross-examined by the accused’s lawyer Kenny Oldwadge in the High Court in Pretoria.

She conceded that she had signed a statement saying she saw a man walking past a window in the direction of Pistorius’s house the night he shot his girlfriend dead.

She said she changed her version of events after thinking about the events of February 14 2013 very carefully and decided that she had not seen this after all.

Prosecutor Gerrie Nel leapt up to defend his State’s witness, saying Oldwadge had not asked his question properly.

Oldwadge said she had testified earlier to not remembering if she heard dogs barking at the time.

Nel said there was a difference between not being able to remember something, and saying one did not remember hearing something.

“I fail to appreciate how there can be a difference between memory and ‘I cannot remember’,” said Oldwadge.

Stipp testified earlier that she might have turned off the barking as white noise but she did hear a woman screaming, a man screaming and six shots fired from the direction of Pistorius’s home.

“This is not the first time that it appears that her memory has failed,” said Oldwadge referring to the testimony.

Nel countered there was a difference between memory failure and not hearing dogs barking.

At this point Judge Thokozile Masipa leaned forward and asked: “Are we talking about dogs barking?”

As the court giggled, she said: “Mr Nel is quite correct, if that is the defence, that dogs barked, then you have to say it.”

Oldwadge added: “It was a feature of her evidence that she heard dogs barking.

“My Lady, I’ll move on.”

In the early hours of February 14 last year, Pistorius shot Steenkamp dead.

The sprinter, nicknamed “Blade Runner”, has denied intending to kill Steenkamp, contending that when he fired four shots into a locked bathroom door, he believed there was an intruder in the toilet cubicle.

The paralympic athlete has pleaded not guilty to charges of the premeditated murder of Steenkamp; as well as contraventions of the Firearms Control Act.

His defence Barry Roux SC has submitted that the screams were only of Pistorius seeking help and that Steenkamp would not have been able to scream after being shot in the head.

The firearm contraventions are linked to separate incidents in which Pistorius allegedly fired a pistol under a table at a Johannesburg restaurant in January 2013, and allegedly shot through the open sunroof of a car while driving with friends in Modderfontein in September 2012.

– Sapa