Paper shuffling at Pistorius Trial

Barry Roux, for Pistorius, was looking at three files relating to the handling of Pistorius’s cricket bat and gun holster.

Col Johannes Vermeulen told Roux he received the bat and holster sealed in evidence bags on March 8, 2013 from the forensic laboratory’s manual biology section. He passed them on to a police photographer on March 11 and 12.

Roux asked him how many positions he assumed when testing how Pistorius would have used the bat to strike his toilet door, and how many photographs he took of this process.

As photos of the scene of the crime, including the blood bespattered toilet floor, were displayed on screens around the court, Pistorius, wearing glasses, looked at Vermeulen as he spoke.

Pistorius had smashed the door open with a cricket bat to get to a dying Steenkamp after he shot her through the door, apparently thinking she was an intruder.

The door and the replica of the cubicle, complete with a toilet, cistern, and magazine rack, was set up next to the witness box in court GD. Four bullet holes are clustered on the right side of the door, just under the keyhole. The toilet is to the left of the door.

Vermeulen is the commander of the material analysis sub-section at the forensic science laboratory.

Pistorius is accused of the premeditated murder of model and law graduate Steenkamp in his home on February 14 last year.

He is also charged with illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition, and two counts of discharging a firearm in public. 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