Oscar’s ex takes the stand

Samantha Taylor, under questioning from State prosecutor Gerrie Nel, stressed that during their relationship Pistorius never failed to alert her when he feared there was an intruder.

Nel begged Judge Thokozile Masipa’s indulgence to introduce fresh evidence before asking Taylor to describe these incidents, taking the disabled Olympic athlete’s defence lawyer by surprise.

The former girlfriend recalled one night when Pistorius heard something hit against the bathroom window.

“He woke me up and asked if I had heard it. I told him it was probably the storm,” said Taylor.

Pistorius on Monday pleaded not guilty to the premeditated murder of Reeva Steenkamp for whom he left Taylor.

He claims he believed he was targeting an intruder when he fired four shots into a locked bathroom, fatally injuring Steenkamp.

Taylor’s testimony on day five of the trial, portrayed Pistorius as a paranoid and aggressive man who frequently argued with her and routinely travelled with a gun, on one occasion firing a 9mm pistol through the sunroof of a car.

“There was a lot of commotion in our relationship,” she said, adding that it ended for good when he attended an award ceremony with Steenkamp.

“He cheated on me with Reeva Steenkamp.”

In cross-examination, Pistorius’s lawyer Barry Roux immediately reduced Taylor to tears.

He said the young woman, who was 17 when she started dating Pistorius, was lying about when their relationship ended and that he would provide copies of their emails to prove this.

Judge Masipa briefly adjourned the court, before Roux resumed questioning and set out to show Taylor’s recollection of events during her relationship with Pistorius was unreliable.

This included her account of the night he pulled out his gun to scare off somebody he believed had followed them to his home. Taylor said it was not true, as Pistorius claimed, that he had merely moved to her side to protect her.

The next witness was the chief security guard at the Silver Woods estate where Pistorius shot Steenkamp in the early hours of 14 February last year.

Pieter Baba too became emotional on the stand after describing the events of that night and recalling his shock when he saw Pistorius carry a fatally wounded Steenkamp down the stairs of his house.

Baba said following reports of gunshots at the athlete’s home, he had called Pistorius, who told him everything was fine.

“Mr Pistorius said to me, ‘security, everything is fine’,” Baba said.

“I heard that he was crying,” he added.

But he told a colleague with him that he was sure that something was wrong.

Pistorius phoned him back and began crying over the phone before the line cut out.

“I immediately told Jacob everything is not right.”

Earlier this week, the court had heard dramatic testimony from Johan Stipp, a neighbour of Pistorius, about finding him crying next to a dying Steenkamp at the bottom of the stairs.

Describing Steenkamp’s bullet wounds in some detail, the witness, who was the first doctor on the scene of the shooting, said she had lost all pulse and it was too late to save her life.

During cross-examination of Stipp on Friday, Roux questioned his recollection that Pistorius told him that he shot Steenkamp because he believed she was an intruder.

“Mr Pistorius says he can’t remember telling you he thought she was an intruder… He recalls asking you to help him,” said Roux.

But Stipp maintained that Pistorius had given him this explanation for shooting Steenkamp.

“I shot her. I thought she was a burglar. I shot her,” he quoted Pistorius as saying.

Roux has systematically questioned the credibility of every witness since the trial began on Monday.

He has put it to Stipp and other neighbours it was impossible that they were woken, as they claim, on the night Steenkamp died by a woman’s screams followed by gunshots.

Roux claims it was in fact Pistorius who they heard scream, and that his voice could easily be mistaken for a woman’s because it rose when he was distraught.

Taylor was repeatedly asked by Nel whether Pistorius, 27, sounded like a man or a woman when he shouted.

She firmly responded: “It sounded like a man, My Lady.”

– Sapa