Oscar trial: expert testifies on crack, hole in door
A former police forensics analyst testified on Tuesday about the bullet holes and cracks in a toilet door in the Pretoria home of murder-accused Oscar Pistorius.
FILE PICTURE: June, Reeva Steenkamp’s mother, is comforted by unidentified relative afte her dead daughter’s picture was shown on screen during the trial of paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria on Wednesday, 9 April 2014. Pistorius sobbed in the witness stand on Tuesday as he described how, gripped by fear, he shot dead his girlfriend through a locked toilet door thinking she was an intruder. Picture: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters/Pool
Roger Dixon confirmed what the High Court in Pretoria had already been told, that Pistorius first shot through the door, then struck it with a cricket bat.
A close-up photo of the reconstructed door, showing two cracks on either side of the fourth and last bullet hole, was displayed in court.
Pistorius’s counsel Barry Roux, SC, asked him what came first, the crack or the hole.
“When the crack was inflicted the bullet hole was already in position,” Dixon said.
If the crack had been there first, the bullet would have taken a chunk out of it.
“I don’t think that’s in dispute. That was also the evidence of Colonel Vermeulen,” Roux said.
A photo of a patch on the door, about 10cm below the handle, where Pistorius apparently kicked it with his prosthetic leg, was then examined.
The white spots visible in the patch were fibres from a sock.
“The only material consistent with this white fibre is the white socks worn over the prostheses of Mr Pistorius,” Dixon said.
Dixon was with the police forensic science laboratory between 1994 and end the end of 2012. He was in charge of the materials analysis sub-section and had completed many courses in crime scene investigation.
Pistorius is accused of murdering Steenkamp in his Pretoria townhouse on February 14 last year. He shot her through the locked toilet door in his townhouse in Pretoria. He used a cricket bat to break down the door afterwards.
The athlete claims he mistook Steenkamp for an intruder about to emerge and attack him. She was hit in the hip, arm, and head.
The paralympian also faces three charges of contravening the Firearms Control Act, on which he has also denied guilt.
– Sapa
