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Oscar Pistorius is a volunteer caretaker at NG Kerk Waterkloof
Judge Masipa questions Oscar’s ‘I didn’t think’
The claim by murder accused paralympian Oscar Pistorius that he did not think he could kill someone was rejected by Judge Thokozile Masipa in the High Court in Pretoria on Thursday.
Paralympian Oscar Pistorius is seen in the dock as judgment is handed down in his murder trial at the High Court in Pretoria on Thursday, 11 September 2014. Picture: Phill Magakoe/Independent Newspapers/ Pool
“This assertion is inconsistent with someone who shot without thinking,” she read from her judgment.
“I shall revert to this later.”
She was referring to Pistorius’s evidence that “he never thought he could kill someone in the toilet”, and that this only occurred to him after Reeva Steenkamp had died.
She was summarising Pistorius’s evidence. She read extracts from what he had told the court: “He did not have time to think”, “he fired shots at the door but did not do so deliberately” and “he did not aim at the door but the firearm was pointed at the door”.
Masipa said Pistorius had told the court he was not ready to discharge his gun. However the safety catch on his gun was off.
Pistorius, 27, is accused of murdering Steenkamp in his Pretoria townhouse on Valentine’s Day last year. He shot her through the locked door of his toilet, apparently thinking she was an intruder about to emerge and attack him. She was hit in the hip, arm, and head.
LIVE VIDEO FEED: Oscar Pistorius Judgment
Masipa said earlier it was clear the sounds most of the witnesses heard were Pistorius using his cricket bat to break down his toilet door to get to a dying Steenkamp, and not the shots he fired.
“It is clear from the rest of the evidence that these were actually the sound of the cricket bat against the door,” she said.
Defence witness and Pistorius’s immediate neighbour Eontle Hillary Nhlengethwa said she was woken by a man screaming, but did not hear shots fired.
Masipa said witnesses heard three loud bangs, which was from the cricket bat, and this was “consistent with the version” of Pistorius.
She rejected evidence from Pistorius’s neighbour Estelle van der Merwe.
The court could not link what she had heard in the early hours of February 14 last year to the events at Pistorius’s home.
Court adjourned for tea at 11am.
The paralympian also faces three charges of contravening the Firearms Control Act — one of illegal possession of ammunition and two 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. On September 30, 2012 he allegedly shot through the open sunroof of a car with his 9mm pistol while driving with friends in Modderfontein.
– Sapa
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