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KZN gunman caught minutes after shooting taxi boss in Pretoria
Reeva Steenkamp’s dad breaks down
Reeva Steenkamp's father Barry broke down in the High Court in Pretoria on Wednesday, as her cousin testified in Oscar Pistorius's sentencing procedures.
FILE PICTURE: Barry, father of Reeva Steenkamp, hangs his head during the handing down of judgment in the murder trial of paralympian Oscar Pistorius at the High Court in Pretoria on Friday, 12 September 2014. Picture: Alon Skuy/Times Media Group/Pool
Kim Martin told the court that Steenkamp was her first cousin and they were a very small family.
“Reeva was the first baby I ever held,” she said before Barry put his head down and cried. His wife June put her arm around him and was stroking his hair.
Barry sat forward with his arms folded on the back of the bench in front of him as his wife kept an arm on his back and shoulders.
Pistorius sat in the dock looking down and passed a letter to his defence team.
Martin is the first of a possible four witnesses that prosecutor Gerrie Nel would call.
On September 12, Pistorius was convicted of culpable homicide on for the Valentine’s Day 2013, shooting of his girlfriend Steenkamp in his Pretoria townhouse. The court found him not guilty of murdering Steenkamp.
Pistorius shot Steenkamp through the locked door of the toilet, apparently thinking she was an intruder about to emerge and attack him. She was hit in the hip, arm, and head.
Pistorius was found guilty of firing a pistol under a table at Tasha’s restaurant in Johannesburg in January 2013 and not guilty of shooting through the open sunroof of a car in Modderfontein on September 30, 2012.
– Sapa
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