FILE PICTURE: State prosecutor Gerrie Nel (R) makes a point during the trial of Olympic and Paralympic track star Oscar Pistorius at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, Monday, 17 March 2014. Pistorius is on trial for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his suburban Pretoria home on Valentine's Day last year. He says he mistook her for an intruder. Picture: Siphiwe Sibeko/Pool
“She was standing in front of the door, facing the door,” police ballistics expert Captain Chris Mangena said to questioning by prosecutor Gerrie Nel in Pistorius’s murder trial.
Pistorius shot his girlfriend through the locked toilet door in his Silver Woods Country Estate townhouse, apparently thinking she was an intruder.
“The bullet penetrated and broke the hip bone,” Mangena said.
He said she fell and landed on top of the magazine rack, her back to the wall.
Mangena was able to establish this by lining up the wounds in Steenkamp’s body with the bullet holes in the door. The distance between the heel and Steenkamp’s hip wound was 93cm, and the height of the first bullet hole in the door 93.5cm.
Pistorius sat leaning forward in the dock, his thumbs pressed into his ears.
The second bullet missed her.
“Bullet B missed her, hit the tiles, and the fragments from the bullet hit her on the back.”
The paralympic athlete has been charged with the premeditated murder of Steenkamp and 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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