Oscar Trial: Witness did not hear screams

Barry Roux, for murder accused Pistorius, put it to radiologist Johan Stipp that another couple, Michelle Burger and her husband Charl Johnson, had testified to having heard “blood-curdling, fearful screaming that carried on during the shots and faded away after”.

The couple’s home is about 170m from Pistorius’s. Stipp’s is much closer, being separated from it by an open plot of land, according to photos displayed on screens around the court.

Stipp testified on Thursday that he woke up around 3am on February 14 last year to what sounded like gunshots, then heard a woman screaming and then three more “bangs”.

He told Roux on Friday that after he went back inside his house from the balcony to call security, he did not hear further screaming.

Asked to explain why, Stipp said: “I probably had compromised hearing at that stage… I was on the phone, not talking, but there were sounds, like dialling tones.”

Roux then moved on to ask Stipp exactly how much of the three panes of frosted bathroom window he could see.

He said one whole pane and the top half of the other two.

On Thursday, Stipp testified that he saw the light in the bathroom was on and the “light silhouette of a person” moving behind the glass from right to left as he stood on his balcony after the screams woke him.

Pistorius is accused of the murder of model and law graduate Reeva Steenkamp.

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.

In September 2010 he allegedly shot through the open sunroof of a car with his 9mm pistol while driving with friends in Modderfontein.

– Sapa