Oscar Trial: Couple tried to call for help

This was the testimony of Charl Johnson, who lives with his wife Michelle Burger in a complex next to Silver Woods Country Estate in Pretoria, where Oscar Pretorius shot dead his girlfriend.

They wanted to alert security about what sounded like an attack.

Johnson was testifying in the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius.

Johnson said he realised they had not called the security of Silver Stream Estate but had called the complex they had previously lived at.

“I then went back to the balcony and I heard the woman’s scream. The intensity and fear escalated and that’s when the first shots were fired,” said Johnson.

He said the last scream came after the last gunshot was fired.

Quizzed on how many shots he heard, Johnson said he initially thought five or six shots.

“I subsequently learned it was four,” he said.

A few hours later, they found out the commotion had come from Pistorius’s home, he said.

Johnson said he and his wife had thought people were being held up at their home.

Burger earlier concluded her testimony in court.

As Johnson continued to testify, Pistorius tapped the back of the bench that was in front of him, wanting to get the attention of his legal team.

He handed them a piece of paper.

A few moments later, his lawyer Barry Roux stood up, and requested that the judge order the witness to speak louder.

The State will try to prove that Pistorius committed premeditated murder when he shot and killed Steenkamp through a bathroom door in his Pretoria home on February 14 last year.

In addition he is charged with premeditated murder and 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