Oscar’s door under fresh scrutiny
A pathologist was questioned in the High Court in Pretoria on Monday about the bullet holes in the toilet door behind which Reeva Steenkamp was shot dead.
FILE PICTURE: Police forensic expert Colonel Johannes Vermeulen holds a cricket bat while standing next to the door of murder accused Oscar Pistorius’ toilet during cross-examination at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria on Wednesday, 12 March 2014. Pistorius, a double amputee, has said he used the bat to break down a locked toilet door through which he shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp last year.He is on trial for premeditated murder. Pistorius has denied guilt, saying he mistook Steenkamp for an intruder. Picture: Werner Beukes/Pool
“I never commented on the sequence of holes in the door and their correlation with the sequence of the wounds,” pathologist Jan Botha said under cross-examination by prosecutor Gerrie Nel.
Botha was the first defence witness in paralympian Oscar Pistorius’s murder trial.
Pistorius shot four times through the locked door of his toilet cubicle, killing his girlfriend, apparently believing she was an intruder.
“You can’t divorce the two,” Nel challenged him.
He quoted from Botha’s statement that “in all probability the sequence was… the first one [shot] was in the hip.”
Nel pounced on a statement by Botha that he had taken the height of the holes in the door into account.
Botha replied: “It’s not my job to determine which bullet hole corresponded with which wound. That is the ballistician’s job.”
Pistorius has been charged with the murder of Steenkamp and of contravening 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.
Pistorius has pleaded not guilty on all the charges.
– Sapa
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