Chief prosecutor Gerrie Nel walks past a courtroom reconstruction of the toilet in which Reeva Steenkamp was shot and killed during the Oscar Pistorius murder trial at the high court in Pretoria, Monday, 14 April 2014. Picture: Antoine de Ras/Independent Newspapers Ltd/Pool
“Why did you stop? Why only four? Why not empty the magazine?” Nel said during cross-examination of the paralympic athlete.
“I’m not sure,” Pistorius replied softly.
“Why not fire at the window?” Nel asked.
Pistorius replied that he was pointing his gun at the door at the time.
He has been charged with murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in his Pretoria house on February 14 last year. He shot her three times through his closed toilet door, saying later he mistook her for an intruder.
He says moments before he heard his bathroom window, which is next to the toilet cubicle, slide open, took his gun and went to investigate.
Nel asked Pistorius why he did not fire a warning shot into the shower.
“The bullet might have ricocheted and hit me.”
Nel asked why he did not foresee a similar thing happening in the closed toilet cubicle.
Pistorius: “I didn’t intend to fire, but I fired.”
Nel: “Did you aim to shoot?”
Pistorius: “No, I didn’t aim to shoot.”
Nel: “So it was just luck that the gun was pointed at the door?”
Pistorius: “It wasn’t luck. She lost her life.”
Before adjourning for lunch, Judge Thokozile Masipa asked to see Nel and Pistorius’s lawyer Barry Roux outside.
According to the State, the shooting happened during an argument.
Pistorius is also charged with three contraventions of the Firearms Control Act, one of illegal possession of ammunition and two of discharging a firearm in public.
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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