Oscar Trial: Witness ‘felt obliged’
The couple who heard a woman screaming the night Oscar Pistorius shot dead Reeva Steenkamp felt morally obliged to come forward, the High Court in Pretoria heard on Tuesday.
FILE PICTURE: State prosecutor Gerrie Nel is seen during a break in proceedings at the murder trial of double amputee Paralympian Oscar Pistorius at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, South Africa, Tuesday, 4 March 2014. Pistorius is accused of the murder of Reeva Steenkamp on Feb 14 2013. Photo: Antoine de Ras – Pool
“We initially did not want to get involved,” IT project manager Charl Johnson said to questioning from prosecutor Gerrie Nel.
As he and his wife Michelle Burger were driving to Mpumalanga on February 22 last year, they heard Oscar Pistorius’s bail application on the radio.
They realised the paralympic athlete’s version of the early morning hours of February 14 differed from their own experience.
They contacted a lawyer friend, and a few days later police Captain Mike van Aardt came to their home to take their statements.
The couple’s townhouse, in the Silver Stream Estate, is 177m from Pistorius’s in the neighbouring Silver Woods Country Estate.
The court adjourned at 3pm.
Unlike on Monday, Pistorius’s family were not in a hurry to leave the court.
Pistorius seemed more at ease, looking at the public gallery and talking to two police officers with his sister Aimee.
The State will try to prove that Pistorius committed premeditated murder when he shot and killed Steenkamp through a toilet door in his Pretoria home on February 14 last year.
In addition, he is charged with illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition, and recklessly discharging a firearm in public.
Pistorius contends he mistook her for an intruder when he shot through the toilet door.
– Sapa
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