Reeva’s cousin is the voice of society – Gerrie Nel

“We were lucky to hear the voice of Kim Martin,” prosecutor Gerrie Nel said in closing arguments of sentencing procedures.

“Every other mother who heard her evidence felt the pain, I felt the pain.”

He said Martin was not just the voice of the family, she was the voice of society.

On September 12, Judge Thokozile Masipa found Pistorius guilty of the culpable homicide of 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.

Nel said not only did Pistorius fire four shots, three hitting Steenkamp, through a locked toilet door but he used a powerful handgun and “devastating” black tallon ammunition.

“What the court must take into account is what the accused did.,” said Nel.

Pistorius was found guilty of firing a pistol under a table at Tasha’s restaurant in Johannesburg in January 2013. He was found not guilty of shooting through the open sunroof of a car in Modderfontein on September 30, 2012, and of illegal possession of ammunition.

– Sapa