by Mandy Wiener
That night, at about 8pm when the front gate of the complex is closed, the guards were doing their rounds. Baba said it was shortly before 3am that a colleague told him he had heard what he believed to be gunshots, and after that he received a call from Johan Stipp who reported that he too had heard gunshots. He said he also received a call from another neighbour, Mike Nhlengethwa. With another guard, Baba sped over to Stipp’s house where they found the doctor standing on the balcony. He said Stipp pointed him towards a house across from his where lights were on – he was pointing at Oscar’s house.
The security guard said that when he arrived at the house he made a call to Oscar’s phone, a claim that was tackled by the defence team.
Baba: I then spoke to Mr Pistorius that is when Mr Pistorius said to me: ‘Security, everything is fine’. That is when I realised that Mr Pistorius was crying. That is when I said to Jacobs not everything was in order as Mr Pistorius was telling me. I then tried to speak to Mr Pistorius.
Interpreter: So that he can do what?
Baba: So that he could come down M’Lady, just to make, so that I can make sure that everything was fine and that is where our conversation ended.
Nel: And what happened after that?
Baba: Mr Pistorius called me back, maybe he was not sure about calling me back. He just started crying over the phone, that is when the line went off again, M’Lady.
Baba stated that when Johan Stander and his daughter Carice Viljoen arrived at the house, he and two colleagues followed them to the front door where they spotted Oscar carrying Reeva down the stairs. He said he never went in to the house, and merely observed the unfolding drama from outside.
Roux questioned Baba about a guard-tracking system installed at the estate that monitors their movement on shift. At specific locations around the estate are clock-in points that a guard has to swipe past every hour. One of these devices is located right outside Oscar’s house.
Roux presented to the court the guard-track records, which showed that at 2:20am the device outside Oscar’s house was activated. This accorded with Baba’s statement that he and colleague Nyiko Maluleke were in the vicinity at that time.
Roux: And if I look at the statements, well I have to look at Mr Malulek[e]’s statement, that there was no noise or no disturbance at that time?
Baba: Your Worship when we went past that place, everything was normal.
Roux: As I understand Mr Malulek[e]’s statement and maybe you can tell me if it is true or not, is that the garage, the outside light was on, but not the inside light?
Baba: Everything was normal as it is always the situation at Mr Pistorius’s house every night.
Baba’s evidence, however, contradicted the testimony of Estelle van der Merwe, who said she woke up to what sounded like a woman having an argument at around 2am. And the state, of course, was relying on her evidence to suggest that Oscar and Reeva had had an argument. But, according to Baba, the lights were off and everything appeared normal.
Roux moved on to another vital piece of evidence for the defence, the call record of the security telephone. It showed that Stipp called the number at 3:15:51am. Baba said Stipp told him that he had heard gunshots coming from a neighbour’s house. This was the call that Johan Stipp claimed had not connected. The next entry in the log showed that neighbour Mike Nhlengethwa called security at 3:16:36am, and he also reported hearing shots to the security guard.
Baba testified in his evidence-in-chief that he called Oscar first, before the athlete returned his call. Roux referred the witness to Oscar’s phone records, which showed the sequence of events was, in fact, the other way around: it was Oscar who called security at 3:21:33am and Baba who returned the call at 3:22:05am. Despite this indisputable evidence, Baba insisted he was correct. ‘M’Lady, I phoned Mr Pistorius first. Mr Pistorius then called me back afterwards and that is true. It is true, M’Lady, that Mr Pistorius had been crying,’ he said. Roux presented other records collected by the state to show that the security was indeed wrong, but no amount of evidence was going to change Baba’s mind. Roux eventually withdrew on the matter, confident that the court would make a finding in his client’s favour based on the available evidence.
The next debate was around what exactly Oscar said to Baba. The witness said the accused told him, ‘Security, everything is fine’, but Roux referred to the security guard’s initial statement to the former investigating officer in which he said Oscar had told him that ‘he is okay’. Roux was challenging the inference that the accused attempted to downplay the situation at his house, and show that what Oscar was actually telling security was that he was unharmed.
The security’s guard’s evidence did not prove to be particularly helpful for the state, but it did assist the defence in setting out its timeline of events. The calls to the security phone and Baba’s movements would be compared against the statements of neighbours, particularly the Stipps. The security guards further confirmed that about an hour before the shooting, all was quiet at the Pistorius household – suggesting that testimony from other witnesses who claimed there had been sounds of an argument in the early hours of the morning was inaccurate.
The neighbours called by Nel to testify in the state’s case were not the only people who heard something that deadly night, and they weren’t the only ‘earwitnesses’ consulted by the state in the months leading up to the trial. When the prosecution closed its case, these witnesses became available to the defence to be called to testify.
For weeks the court had heard of Johan Stander – the first person Oscar called after discovering Reeva in the toilet cubicle and amongst the first to arrive on the scene – but he was not called as a state witness. Many of us sitting on the media benches in the public gallery wondered why. Was it because what he had to say did not correlate with the state’s version of events?
Stander is a middle-aged man with grey, spiky hair and a weathered face with reading glasses perched on top of a sharp nose. He considers himself more than simply Oscar’s friend, but rather a confidant, mentor and father figure. When Stander moved in to the estate in 2009, Oscar offered to help move the Standers’ furniture in for them. The friendship grew, with Oscar regularly dropping by for coffee, and Stander caring for the athlete’s dogs when he was competing overseas. Oscar also befriended Stander’s daughter Carice over the years.
Stander had provided the police with a statement the day after the shooting and then deposed a second affidavit later in 2013 when Mike van Aardt had taken over the investigation. He had also consulted with the prosecuting team and was under the impression he was a state witness, expecting to be called, albeit reluctantly, to testify against his friend and neighbour. One of these consultations with Nel took place as recently as January 2014 when he was told that only he or his daughter would be called to give evidence. But once the state’s case had been closed, neither of them had been called to the High Court in Pretoria. This left the door open for Oscar’s legal team to use Stander and Viljoen to bolster the defence’s case. Stander was the defence’s fourth witness and his testimony was stirring and vivid.
Stander testified about how he was a member of the estate’s management committee until January 2013 and recalled several incidents of crime, which he had relayed to Oscar. He remembered an incident in Milkwood Way where intruders scaled the electric fence and tied up a woman before stealing items from the house. In a second incident, intruders used a ladder to gain access to the house. This was important for Oscar’s defence because it planted the seed of possibility – and fear – that a ladder could be used to gain entry to a house. Stander further recalled a house being burgled and a robbery in his street where the home-owner was locked up while items were stolen. The evidence was to show the court that, as a friend of Oscar, and former member of the estate management, the subject of crime would have come up and been in Oscar’s mind. Stander stated that the incidents were recorded in the estate’s incident book and were discussed at minuted estate management meetin
gs. He said that when Oscar returned from events abroad he would pop in for a cup of coffee where he would be informed of incidents at the complex.
Stander had met Reeva for the first time in the December before the shooting when Oscar visited his home before leaving for Cape Town on holiday. When the athlete asked his neighbour to look after his dogs, Reeva said it wouldn’t be necessary because she would stay at the house and feed the animals.
Shifting the court’s attention to the shooting, Stander testified that he had received a call from Oscar at about 3:19am – he remembers it clearly: ‘Oom [Uncle] Johan, please, please, please come to my house. Please. I shot Reeva. I thought she was an intruder. Please, please come quickly.’
He jumped out of bed, waking his wife in the process, and walked out of their room into the passage where he found Carice, who told him she had heard someone screaming for help. Together they sped across the estate to Oscar’s house where they found his front door slightly ajar. When Carice pushed it open Oscar was coming down the stairs with Reeva in his arms.
Stander said Oscar was relieved to see them and pleaded with them to help take her to the hospital before placing her on the floor at the foot of the staircase. He described Oscar as being in a state of panic as the pair tried to calm him down, but just as he was about to call an ambulance, Dr Stipp arrived at the scene. While the radiologist assessed Reeva, Stander called emergency services. Paramedics arrived about 20 minutes later, only to declare her dead. Stipp and Stander then exchanged numbers before the doctor left. During their brief conversation, Stipp had explained to Stander that he had heard four shots, screaming, followed by another four shots.
Stander told the court that he had remained at the scene where he saw Oscar go upstairs to collect Reeva’s ID for the paramedics, and was there when the first police officer – Lieutenant-Colonel Schoombie van Rensburg – arrived on the scene. He said several vehicles had parked outside the house, with officers both in uniform and civilian clothes. From where he was standing outside, ‘one could see how the people were moving up and down the stairs’. It was a claim that would be seen to support the defence’s contention that the crime scene had been contaminated and tampered with.
Stander explained in detail, often coming close to tears himself, how he first set eyes on Oscar that morning, that he was ‘broken, desperate, pleading’, how remorseful he believed Oscar was for the killing – the type of comments the defence needed and had been asking previous state witnesses about.
In his cross-examination, Nel questioned Stander about the security in the estate and the breaches about which he had earlier told the court. He believed the incident in which the woman had been tied up had happened some time in 2011 or 2012, but said he could not disagree with Nel if the police records showed that it was actually in 2009. Stander said the incident involving the ladder took place also between 2011 and 2012, but could not say whether it had been reported to the police – in fact, it had not been.
As per estate regulations, Stander’s property was also not secured with burglar bars – in fact, his daughter went to bed on the night of 13 February with her balcony door open. Nel had thus made his point: there were few incidents of crime in the estate and the Standers felt comfortable enough to sleep with doors wide open. Stander also confirmed to Nel that when Reeva stayed at Oscar’s house alone for a week while he was in Cape Town, there was no real concern for her safety, although they did communicate via SMS.
Nel pressed the witness on whether he had discussed with Oscar how many shots he had fired and why he had opened fire. ‘He never said to you it was an accident?’ asked Nel.
‘When he phoned me he said: “I made a mistake”,’ explained Stander.
That was exactly what the prosecutor wanted to hear. It was precisely what Oscar would say during Nel’s opening salvo – ‘I made a mistake’ – which he repeated three times before Nel asked him what mistake he had made. It also spoke to Oscar’s ‘intention’, which was a crucial element the state needed to prove in the case.
And now here was Oscar’s friend offering the same version of his defence – that it was an accident. But then Stander apologised, saying that he himself had just made a mistake and it was the inference he had drawn from the conversation that morning.
But Nel wasn’t convinced, and interpreted the comment as Stander showing his support for the accused by introducing a claim to support his defence.
After a brief re-examination by Oldwadge, the assessor Henzen-Du Toit asked Stander several questions about the alarm system and whether Reeva knew how to operate it – as she had similarly asked Oscar. The neighbour was confident that Reeva did know how the system operated and which buttons to press on the remote control to activate and deactivate the alarm. It was unclear why the assessor sought to establish this, but she might have been testing the possibility that Reeva might have at some stage during the night left the bedroom and gone downstairs to eat. This would explain pathologist Gert Saayman’s findings related to the contents of Reeva’s stomach. Stander’s evidence provided the defence with another timeline to work from and it also confirmed Stipp being outside Oscar’s house at 3:28am when the call was made to an ambulance service.
Carice Viljoen is Stander’s daughter, who has married since the incident. At the time, she lived with her parents in the Silver Woods estate and was also friends with Oscar. Viljoen was clearly nervous when she took the stand, at times speaking so fast that Roux was forced to interject and ask her to slow down. And yet, despite coming close to tears on several occasions, she insisted that she be allowed to continue.
On the witness stand, she described being woken up by the barks of her dog on the morning of Valentine’s Day. Her balcony door was open and in the distance she could hear a man screaming for help; there were three screams, she said. She stated that after closing the sliding door to her room and climbing back into bed, where she contemplated taking some action, she saw the lights switch on in her parents’ bedroom. As she left her room she encountered her parents and her mother explained that Oscar had just called saying he had shot Reeva. Viljoen and her father arrived at Oscar’s house minutes later.
Viljoen said when she pushed open the front door to Oscar’s house she saw the frantic athlete carrying Reeva down the stairs. The witness started crying as the tempo of her testimony picked up. She described how she told Oscar to put Reeva down on the floor, dismissing his request to help take Reeva to a hospital. Viljoen said she was kneeling on one side of Reeva with Oscar on the other where together they tried to assess her. Viljoen then ran upstairs to collect towels from a linen cupboard to try to stop the bleeding, but it was all in vain. She remembered Dr Johan Stipp arriving, but he was inside only briefly before going back out, and later the paramedics prompted her and Oscar to step back from Reeva to allow them to work on her.
Viljoen testified that when Oscar went to fetch Reeva’s ID upstairs, she went after him to call him back, fearing that he would shoot himself. A short while later, at about 3:55am, she saw Oscar trying to place a call, but he was not making any sense. She took the phone from him and told the person on the other end of the line – his friend Justin Divaris – what was happening before helping him call two more people: his brother Carl and agent Peet van Zyl.
Viljoen remembered Colonel van Rensburg being the first police officer on the scene, and seeing two additional officers in plain clothes inside the house. She told Roux that besides those three police officers, she saw no others inside the house until later in the morning when more arrived. She said that only after Carl arrived did Van Rensburg properly secure the scene and control who entered and exited the area. Viljoen said while she was with Oscar in the kitchen, trying to comfort him, she remembered seeing people going up and down the stairs, but she could not identify them.
Viljoen testified that she later accompanied Aimee upstairs to fetch clothes and a few personal items for Oscar. After collecting the items and sitting in a car, she said Aimee decided she wou
ld take Reeva’s handbag from the crime scene. ‘She went into the house and walked past the policemen standing there and took the bag. I left the bag on the kitchen counter, the table, after I took the licence out and I left it there and she just went and fetched it because we wanted to keep it safe for her mother,’ said Viljoen.
This testimony was to provide another example of how the police failed to secure the crime scene properly; that someone could simply walk into the house and exit with an item without it being checked or documented was not correct procedure. Oscar’s second cellphone was another item removed from the scene, but police would only make this discovery days later.
Viljoen did remember, however, that when she joined Aimee upstairs to collect clothes and a watch for Oscar, a policeman – who she pointed out in court – accompanied the pair. The same police officer did not allow them to go into the bathroom, the primary crime scene.
‘This is Warrant Officer Van Staden, Bennie van Staden, photographer,’ said Nel.
‘It is kind of burned into my mind for the rest of my life,’ she said, indicating the magnitude of the trauma experienced that morning.
‘Unfortunately … his face,’ quipped Nel, before he continued. ‘Now can I also just show you a photograph? There is an album in front of you. If you open that red one over here.’
‘Is this going to be a photo that is going to make me cry?’ asked the witness, fearing it could be a graphic image from the crime scene.
‘No, it will not,’ said the prosecutor, to hushed laughs from the gallery.
The photo depicted the upstairs linen cupboard with one of its double doors opened and a blue towel crumpled on the floor in front of it. It was exactly as Viljoen had left it; she clearly recalled dropping the towel there in her haste to attend to Reeva downstairs.