Oscar describes shooting

Pistorius, 27, told the High Court in Pretoria that minutes before, in the middle of the night, he had panicked when he heard his bathroom window slam and scrambled on his leg stumps to retrieve his 9mm pistol from the side of his bed.

“My Lady, that’s the moment that everything changed. I thought that there was a burglar that was gaining entry to my home.”

The double amputee paralympian said his next thoughts were: “I needed to arm myself, that I needed to protect Reeva and that I needed to get my gun.”

With the firearm in his hand, he then crept back to the bathroom. He said he believed Steenkamp was still in bed, and called to her to ring the police.

“I wasn’t sure if someone was going to come up the ladder or out of the toilet and attack me,” he said in tears, referring to a ladder workmen at his house had used earlier in the day.

“I heard a noise from inside the toilet which I perceived to be someone inside the toilet. I fired four shots into the door and shouted for Reeva to phone the police.

“I don’t know how long I stood there for, shouting for Reeva…”

He said his ears were ringing from the gunshots and he was not sure whether she had responded, so he made his way back to the bedroom still calling to her.

Pistorius, who is accused of killing the blonde model with intent, dramatically described his dread at realising that she was not in bed and that he may have shot her.

“But there was nobody, no one responded to me,” he said, choking up.

He said he looked to see if she was hiding on the floor beside the bed or behind a curtain, all the while still pointing his firearm in the direction of the dark passage.

“I then… it was that point My Lady that it first dawned upon me that it could be Reeva that could be in the bathroom, in the toilet.”

Pistorius said he made his way back to the bathroom with “mixed emotions”, not wanting to believe it could be Steenkamp at whom he had fired and found the door locked.

He ran to the balcony and screamed “help, help, help”, and then put on his prostheses and tried to kick open the door.

“I don’t think I ever screamed like that or cried like that. I was crying out for the Lord to help me, I was crying for Reeva I was screaming.”

At this point in his testimony, Pistorius collapsed in hysterical sobs and Judge Thokozile Masipa adjourned court until Wednesday morning.

Pistorius had been on the stand all day, and at one point removed his prostheses to demonstrate why he felt compromised without them.

A collective gasp went up from the public benches as the sprinter re-appeared in the court room on his leg stumps, suddenly a shadow of the famed figure seen on the track.

Pistorius has pleaded not guilty to premeditated murder over the pre-dawn shooting on Valentine’s Day last year.

Earlier on Tuesday, Pistorius had told the court he was “besotted” with Steenkamp.

Under questioning from his defence lawyer Barry Roux, he read dozens of mobile phone text messages he exchanged with Steenkamp in the months they dated and spoke of the ups and downs of their relationship.

The messages mostly portray a caring, affectionate pair, with Pistorius calling his lover “Angel” and constantly worrying about her safety.

But the prosecution last month focused on a number of bitter rows conducted via text message, notably one in which Steenkamp complained of Pistorius’s temper and said at times she felt scared of him.

Referring to one particular disagreement, Pistorius conceded that he had been “insecure and jealous” when Steenkamp spoke to another man but insisted they soon resolved the issue and were planning a future together.

A message Steenkamp sent in January 2013 read: “I know we argue from time to time, but I know we are actually quite similar.”

Pistorius began his testimony on Monday with a tearful apology to Steenkamp’s family and swore that to his mind he had been trying to protect her when he blindly fired the shots into the bathroom door.

Neighbours called to the stand by the State have testified that they heard a woman scream in fear from the direction of Pistorius’s home around the time Steenkamp died.

But Roux has memorably insisted that his client screams “like a woman” when he is emotional and that the witnesses only heard one voice.

He has also pleaded not guilty to three firearms-related charges that have allowed the prosecution to lead evidence portraying the track star as hot-headed and irresponsible.

On Tuesday, Pistorius flatly denied having fired his handgun through the open sunroof of a car on an outing to the Vaal River with friends, contradicting their testimony.

“That never happened,” he said.

– Sapa