Force needed to break down door with bat – Oscar trial witness
A lot of force is needed to break open a wooden door using a cricket bat, the High Court in Pretoria heard on Tuesday.
The door through which Reeva Steenkamp was shot used as evidence and displayed during the Oscar Pistorius murder trial at the high court in Pretoria, Monday, 14 April 2014. Picture: Antoine de Ras/Independent Newspapers Ltd/Pool
This was according to forensic expert Roger Dixon, who said he had performed this test.
“I still have pain in my forearm because it takes a lot of force,” Dixon told the court.
He was giving evidence in murder-accused Oscar Pistorius’s trial.
Pistorius shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp through a locked toilet door at his home in Pretoria on Valentine’s Day last year. He claims to have mistaken her for an intruder, and that he fired the shots by accident.
He is charged with murdering Steenkamp and contravening the Firearms Control Act.
During his testimony, Pistorius told the court he broke down the door using a cricket bat.
On Tuesday, the court heard two sound clips recorded when Dixon conducted tests on the sounds that would be generated when a bat hit against a door in an effort to break it.
Dixon explained that in one clip, he was hitting the bat while swinging it from above his shoulder. The second was when he banged the door with the bat from a lower, sweep-like position.
The tests had been conducted at a shooting range to replicate the same open conditions that existed on the morning Pistorius shot Steenkamp and broke down the door.
After attentively listening to the proceedings, Pistorius, who had earlier testified in the trial, lowered his head towards his thighs when the sounds were played.
He placed his thumbs over his ears, attempting to block out the sound.
– Sapa
