Paralympian Oscar Pistorius talks to his lawyer Barry Roux before the start of court proceedings of his murder trial on Monday, 24 March 2014 at the high court in Pretoria. Pistorius is accused of the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp whom he shot through a bathroom door on Valentine's Day last year. He claims that he mistook her for an intruder. Picture: Chris Collingridge/TheStar/Pool
“Where do we find the time that we’ve lost?” Oldwadge asked Annette Stipp.
Stipp testified to hearing gunshots and a woman screaming between 3.02am and 3.17am on February 14 last year, from a nearby house in the Silver Woods Estate, Pretoria.
She was testifying in Pistorius’s trial. He is accused of the premeditated murder of Steenkamp in his townhouse on February 14 last year. Pistorius contends he shot her through the locked door of his toilet, thinking she was an intruder.
After hearing what sounded like gunshots, Stipp got out of bed and went onto a small balcony of her bedroom, which looked out over an open plot at Pistorius’s bathroom windows.
She and her husband Johan then went onto the larger balcony of their bedroom to try and see what was happening.
Oldwadge asked her how much time elapsed between their moving from the small to the large balcony.
“I can’t say exactly how much time we spent at each step of the process,” she replied.
He asked her how much time they were on the larger balcony for.
“I’m not quite sure, but it could have been at least 10 minutes… that’s an assumption,” she replied.
At one point she interrupted Oldwadge to add something to a statement.
“One moment, I don’t interrupt you and I expect the same courtesy,”
Oldwadge said.
“You were at odds with me when I mentioned you were on the small balcony three to four minutes… I remind you of your evidence earlier when you said you didn’t have a watch. So you’re not in a position to tell us. Somewhere time was wasted.”
Stipp replied: “I maintain that I walked from the small balcony to the larger balcony without spending time in the bedroom.”
Stipp is married to radiologist Johan Stipp, who testified in the first week of the trial.
Pistorius 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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