We didn’t want to be involved – Oscar Trial witness
Amid a tough cross-examination in the Oscar Pistorius murder trial, a witness said on Thursday he and his wife had not wanted to be involved in the trial.
Oscar Pistorius and Barry Roux. Picture: Themba Hadebe/SAPA.
“We didn’t want to be involved in this matter. We are very private people,” Charl Johnson told the High Court in Pretoria.
The thin, tall man sought to remain calm as he was cross-examined by Pistorius’s lawyer, Barry Roux.
He said he and his wife, Michelle Burger, had wanted to find a channel to disclose what they knew and remain anonymous.
Their faces are not being publicised.
Burger had taken to the witness stand earlier in the week. After remaining steadfast in her replies during cross-examination, she crumbled on Tuesday and cried before the court.
The couple live in the Silver Stream Estate which is next to the Silver Woods Country Estate — the complex where Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day.
On Thursday, Roux questioned Johnson on the three sets of notes he made weeks after the shooting on what he could remember.
Roux questioned on him on the changes and phrases he had made on the notes.
“It’s a draft. Draft means it will be amended,” said Johnson.
Roux continued to dig deeper for an answer.
“It’s the nature of how I do my work,” said Johnson.
“I try to improve the quality of the work that I write… to use proper English and grammar,” said Johnson.
Johnson said that even as more information came forward in Pistorius’s bail application, he did not change any of his notes nor the statement he gave to police.
“I received confirmation during the bail application that it was four shots (fired at Pistorius’s home). But I still told police I wasn’t sure I had heard. I said it was about four and five shots,” he said.
As he responded, Roux looked at his colleague Kenny Oldwage, smiled and softly murmured something to him.
Oldwage is a member of Pistorius’s defence team.
Roux kept bringing up similarities that existed in Johnson’s and Burger’s official statements that they gave to police.
The couple claimed their statements were given independently and they have not shared any information since the trial started on Monday.
The State will try to prove that Pistorius committed premeditated murder when he shot and killed Steenkamp through the locked bathroom door at his home.
In addition he is charged with the illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition.
Pistorius’s lawyers will argue that he mistook her for an intruder when he shot through the bathroom door.
– Sapa
