Reeva talking to Oscar – state
Reeva Steenkamp was standing in front of a toilet door talking to Oscar Pistorius the night she was shot dead, the High Court in Pretoria heard on Monday.
FILE PICTURE: State prosecutor Gerrie Nel cross-examines paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius during his murder trial at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria on Wednesday, 9 April 2014. Pistorius sobbed in the witness stand on Tuesday as he described how, gripped by fear, he shot dead his girlfriend through a locked toilet door thinking she was an intruder. Picture: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters/Pool
“She was talking to you,” prosecutor Gerrie Nel told Pistorius.
“All the screams and shouting were at her because she was talking to you and she was fleeing for her life.”
Nel said Steenkamp was standing in front of the door and not hiding because she was talking to the athlete.
Nel: “Why would Reeva stand there if she was scared?”
Pistorius: “I don’t know my lady.”
Nel: “Why would she be there except if she was talking to you?”
Pistorius: “I don’t know my lady.”
Nel continued to ask Pistorius why. However Judge Thokozile Masipa intervened.
She told Nel his question was “a bit unfair” and said if Pistorius said he did not know, he could not ask the athlete over and over again.
Nel said he would accept what the court had indicated to him, reiterating the State’s case was that Pistorius “knows that he shot her while she was talking to him”.
Pistorius has been charged with murdering Steenkamp when he shot through the locked toilet door of his Pretoria home on February 14 last year. He says he mistook her for an intruder.
Pistorius has pleaded not guilty and in his plea statement denied he had argued with her shortly before the shooting.
Pistorius is also charged with three contraventions of the Firearms Control Act, one of illegal possession of ammunition and two 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.
He has also denied guilt on these three charges.
– Sapa
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