‘I heard a woman’ – Oscar Trial witness
A witness maintained on Thursday that he heard a woman, and not a man, scream from the direction of Oscar Pistorius's house the night his girlfriend was killed.
Oscar Pistorius is seen during his court appearance on Wednesday, 5 March 2014. The double amputee and Paralympian is appearing in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, South Africa. Pistorius is accused of the murder of model Reeva Steenkamp on February 14, 2013. Picture: Alon Skuy/Pool
“I’m convinced I heard a lady scream,” said Charl Johnson, responding to a question from Pistorius’s lawyer, Barry Roux, in the High Court in Pretoria.
“It’s easy to distinguish between the voice of lady and a man,” he said, adding that it was difficult to accept that it could have come from Pistorius.
Johnson lives in the Silver Stream Estate which is next to the Silver Woods Country Estate, the gated complex where Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day last year.
Johnson and his wife, Michelle Burger, have testified they heard the screams of a woman followed by gunshots from Pistorius’ home.
The couple live 177m away from Pistorius’s home.
The State will try to prove that Pistorius committed premeditated murder when he shot and killed Steenkamp through the locked bathroom door at his home.
In addition he is charged with illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition.
Pistorius’s lawyers will argue that he mistook her for an intruder when he shot through the bathroom door.
– Sapa
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