‘Hands off my president!’: Mama Joy ‘asking court to drop charges’ against Danny Jordaan
Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius looks on ahead of his sentencing hearing at the high court in Pretoria on Thursday, 16 October 2014. The 27-year-old Pistorius, whose lower legs were amputated as a baby, was convicted of culpable homicide last month for the shooting of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day in 2013. Picture: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters/Pool
“I find it disturbing that a man with a disability, that competed with able-body athletes would now shamelessly use this as an argument…,” Nel said during closing arguments of sentencing procedures.
“Perhaps use our handicap as a handicap on call – when it suits us it’s a handicap.”
Nel said social worker and probation officer Annette Vergeer testified for the defence earlier this week that prison facilities could not cater for Pistorius’s disability because of slippery floors and that showers had no railing.
He said that the shower at the athlete’s home had no railing in the shower.
On September 12, Pistorius was convicted of culpable homicide on for the Valentines Day 2013, shooting of his girlfriend Reeva 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.
Nel said that it was important to see what Pistorius was remorseful of and if it was not said in court it would be lip-service.
“I’m not saying that he is not remorseful to the extent that she is dead, but not for what he did.”
Pistorius was found guilty of firing a pistol under a table at Tasha’s restaurant in Johannesburg in January 2013. He was found not guilty of shooting through the open sunroof of a car in Modderfontein on September 30, 2012, and of illegal possession of ammunition.
– Sapa
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