Probation officer recommends house arrest for Oscar Pistorius

“Correctional supervision offers punishment with a high penal value… it is not a light punishment,” Annette Vergeer said to questioning from Barry Roux, for Pistorius.

As she rapidly read through her report, Steenkamp’s cousin Kim Martins sat in the public gallery crying.

Vergeer said a prison environment was not suitable for someone with Pistorius’s disability. He would have to walk on hard cement floors on his stumps, there were no baths, and no hand rails in the showers for him.

“It will only have a negative impact and in fact place him in danger. It will not assist him, it will break him,” she said of a prison sentence.

On September 12 Judge Thokozile Masipa found Pistorius guilty of the culpable homicide of his girlfriend, model and law graduate Steenkamp, but not guilty of her murder.

Pistorius had claimed he thought there was a burglar in his toilet when he fired four shots through the locked door in the early hours of February 14 last year, killing Steenkamp. The State had argued he killed her during an argument.

Vergeer said Pistorius was still fairly young, a first offender, and had repeatedly shown remorse and accepted responsibility for his actions.

“The accused does not appear to be such a danger to society that he should be removed.”

Masipa also found Pistorius guilty of discharging a firearm in public, when he shot from his friend Darren Fresco’s Glock pistol under a table at Tasha’s restaurant in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg, in January 2013.

Pistorius was found not guilty on two firearms-related charges – illegal possession of ammunition, and shooting through the open sunroof of a car with his 9mm pistol while driving with friends in Modderfontein on September 30, 2012.

– Sapa

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