One Tragic Night

by Mandy Wiener

  The purpose of this revelation was twofold: first to illustrate just how emotionally distraught the accused is and that he is still suffering the emotional effects of being responsible for killing his girlfriend; and to show that he continues to harbour an inescapable and incapacitating fear of crime to the point that he has a security guard posted at his bedroom door. These two themes, of remorse and vulnerability, were central to the defence team’s case and the basis for trying to prove that Oscar’s conduct in the moments leading up to the shooting was reasonable, and that his state of mind after the event was inconsistent with a man who planned to kill the woman he loved.

  It was a carefully crafted prologue that concluded with a timed pause from the advocate to allow the court to reflect on what they’d just heard. Roux then changed stride by casting the court’s mind back to 22 November 1986. ‘Mr Pistorius, going to your background, when were you born?’ Oscar discussed his childhood growing up in a loving home, but with a father who wasn’t often around because he worked away from home and a ‘soft heart-natured’ mother who was a fantastic parent. After his parents separated when he was six years old, the three children and their mom struggled financially, but a supportive extended family made sure they were never in want. Oscar said they moved around quite a lot.

  Roux asked about the ‘difficulty with his legs’.

  ‘I would not say there is a difficulty with my legs,’ Oscar said after a brief hesitation, reluctant to concede he is disabled, reminiscent of the man who had fought for parity in the athletic arena. ‘I would say that I am … I have got prosthetic legs that allow me to … help me to overcome those disabilities or those difficulties, yes a difficulty would be when I do not have my legs on. I do not have balance. I have very limited mobility.’

  Oscar described the medical condition with which he was born, how at the age of 11 months his legs were amputated, he received his first pair of prosthetic legs two months after that procedure, and had since been mobile on those legs. Despite his obvious handicap, his parents didn’t see this as something that should hold the boy back. Oscar said his parents, particularly his mother, treated him like any other child. While he was bullied on occasions, he ably stood up for himself as he was taught to do by his mother.

  From a young age he was very active, participating in a variety of sporting activities without letting his disability impede him. Oscar explained how he had been injured in high-school rugby and how he made his way into disabled athletics.

  Oscar also revealed that his mother was particularly concerned by crime, so much so that she slept with a handgun in a padded pouch under her pillow at night. This fear was exacerbated by the lack of a man in the house and that they often lived in areas hard hit by crime. Oscar said at night when his mother got scared, she would call the police. ‘On a couple of occasions, they did break into our home, but more often than not, it was just her being scared and so she had come, you know, at night and call us to go and sit in her room and many times we would just wait for the police to arrive,’ he said.

  Oscar said his mother’s death when he was 15 years old was devastating. ‘Everything we learnt in life, I learnt from her and when she passed away it was very unexpected.’

  Oscar discussed the state of his stumps and the effect they have on his mobility. It was the first time the world was hearing intimate details related to the athlete’s stumps. These parts of his body are rarely visible, and when they are they’re covered in socks and seen for seconds as he changes between prosthetic legs and his running blades. Oscar said that when his legs were amputated, doctors transplanted the heel pad from his foot onto the end of the stump. ‘As I grew, the bone below my knee grew and so the heel pad was supposed to stay at the bottom, but it has rotated as the bone has grown around the back and it is worse on the left side, to the point that I have spoken to my surgeon over the last couple of years to redo the left stump, move the heel pad so that there is soft tissue on the bottom of the bones that I can walk on my stumps better.

  ‘The right stump is about a centimetre longer than the left, but because of the heel pad moving on the left stump, I cannot place weight on my left stump, so I have to rotate my entire leg, my knee joint out to the left when I walk without my prosthetic legs on,’ he said.

  These problems affect his balance. He can stand on his stumps, but cannot stand still on them. To stand still, he has to hold on to something, as was evident in the pictures taken at Ergonomics Technologies in Centurion, when he had his measurements taken following his arrest. While on his stumps, Oscar has to hold on to a chair, unlike his ability to stand when wearing his prosthetic legs.

  As expected of any toned, professional athlete, Oscar’s thighs are muscular and bulky, but this appearance ends just below the knee. On the back of his legs, just below the crease where the knee bends, there is a bulk of muscle that appears to be what’s left of his calves. The profile changes dramatically as the skin hugs the bone and becomes considerably thinner. Vertical scars extend from the heel pad up the back of this section almost to the point where these calf muscles start. In the photos, scabs and cuts characterise the front of his stumps, evidence of the difficulties he faces wearing prosthetic legs. The left pad is visibly different to the right one, appearing to have a greater surface area and shifting towards the inside of his leg.

  When Oscar removes his prosthetic legs, he likes to keep them close by. He lets them air at night and often places them on top of each other with a pair of pants or another garment covering them. ‘In many disabled people, it is an extension of your body. I would not leave my prosthetic legs lying around. I do not really want to be seen without them or just, you know, having them lie around. So, I would leave them close to my bag or in a bag,’ he said, referring to how he would treat them when at the athletics track.

  ‘I think everybody in South Africa has been exposed to crime at some point, I think,’ said Oscar. But not every South African has been exposed to the sheer volume of crime that he claims. Misfortune appears to have followed him throughout his life. He stated that growing up his family was exposed to break-ins during which members of the family were tied up and assaulted. As a young boy, the family returned from a holiday to find that his dad’s house had been burgled – ‘what was not taken was destroyed’. Oscar said his father has been hijacked twice and ‘many other’ members of his family have been victims of housebreakings and violent crimes.

  Later in his testimony Oscar described how the female members of his family are not permitted to drive alone at night. ‘They have all got run-flat tyres and smash-and-grab on their windows and most of them have automatic cars, so that they cannot stall if there is a smash-and-grab or an attempt hijacking and I did not want Reeva to drive alone at night. It is not safe,’ he said.

  Oscar claimed to be a victim too: he said his house was burgled in 2005 while at an athletics event in the UK; on another occasion a stranger crept into his garden and kicked his dog.

  Oscar told the court about an incident when he was driving at night on the N1 highway through Centurion back from an interview in Joburg. ‘A car came up behind me and it was going a lot faster than I was and I changed lanes and it came past me and it slowed down a couple of car lengths in front of me and I just saw a muzzle flash, it was dark and I saw the muzzle flash and I could hear the bang coming from the vehicle,’ he said.

  The athlete said he pulled off the highway and found parking at a nearby restaurant from where he called a friend and was eventually picked up. He said he could not remember who he called.

  It was not the last time Oscar was followed or harassed while on the road – he recalled an incident with ex-girlfriend Samantha Taylor when he believed he was being followed to his estate. ‘I jumped out of the car and I distanced myself from the car and I had my firearm by my side. I did not draw it but I had my hand on it, on my hip and the two gentlemen in the car sped off.’

  And, he continued, ‘[there] had been other occasions where similar cars, or
the same looking car has followed me for a couple of days at a time and I was not sure of who it was or what it was, but I phoned my agent and informed him’.

  Then just a month before Oscar shot dead his girlfriend, he did in fact pull his gun out. He had witnessed three occupants of a minibus taxi force another driver off the road, pull him from his vehicle and assault him with bricks.

  ‘I jumped the light and I hooted until I pulled up. I drew my firearm and I pointed it at the three people and they jumped in the taxi and they sped off. I called Netcare. I phoned the police and at this point maybe 30 people had come up from the shopping centre … the situation seemed to be contained, so I left. I got in my car and I left,’ he said.

  Oscar said he was the victim of an assault in December 2012 after receiving threats. He said he reported the matter to the Hawks, who arranged a meeting between him and the other party so the matter could be resolved.

  Oscar said that since he bought his house at the Silver Woods estate in 2007, there had been constant development and upgrades to the security system in an effort to thwart persistent attempts by criminals to gain entry to the property. Oscar knew of several neighbours who had been burgled or robbed. In one instance, a ladder was used to gain entry to a property. In February 2013 Oscar was in the process of renovating his house in preparation to sell it so he could move to Joburg. The house had damp issues, needed a new coat of paint on the exterior, had a broken window downstairs and the air-conditioning was not working.

  Oscar had two dogs, which he bought as protection, but said they didn’t have the right personality for that. ‘They were very placid and they are loving dogs. They are quite calm, contrary to the names of the animals, my pit bull and bull terrier I always leave around, you know, if I had friends over they would interact and if they would play with kids; they were not at all aggressive. They were not vicious dogs. They were not trained to be attack dogs,’ he said.

  In the lead-up to the trial many people asked why Oscar would have believed an intruder managed to climb into his bathroom when he had two dogs, and why he never considered that the fact there was no barking indicated that there was no intruder. Oscar’s evidence about his dogs thus explained how a stranger would have unhindered access to the property and why they wouldn’t react. After the shooting, family friends in Tzaneen adopted the dogs.

  Oscar said religion was very important to him, partly because of his mother’s influence. Sheila Pistorius was an Anglican who sang in the church choir and participated in a particular kind of religious dancing. ‘My mother taught me that … you know … we grew up just knowing that religion is … God is, you know, our refuge and it does not matter what may come of life, but you can always turn to the Lord. When my mom passed away I struggled a bit with my faith. But I always knew that the Lord was part of my life,’ he said.

  Oscar’s faith was revived in 2011, and he started placing more and more trust in God to get where he wanted to be. Then he met Reeva. ‘She was a very strong Christian. She would pray for me at night. We would pray about everything. Pray about my training. Pray about all the small things I had in my life. You know we would pray before we eat and ja, I mean … I think religion is maybe … or it definitely is, God is the thing that has got me through this last year,’ he said. The behaviour of Oscar and his siblings holding hands, heads bowed together in prayer in the courtroom, was evidence of this.

  At this stage of his life, Oscar didn’t appear to consider his disability much of a factor in his vulnerability. He felt that when fitted with his prosthetic legs, he was equal to his able-bodied counterparts, but without them he was at a significant disadvantage. Add to that a person who appears to have been disproportionately affected by crime, from a young age with a single mother who slept with a handgun under her pillow, to an adult who was randomly shot at on the highway, followed home and allegedly burgled. All these factors combined made for a fearful Oscar when he found himself without his legs and believing someone had broken into his home. It was a narrative the state did not believe.

  When Oscar led the court through his version of events, when it came to that critical moment in the bathroom when he stood on his stumps with his firearm pointed at the door, his only explanation for what happened was: ‘and then I heard a noise from inside the toilet what I perceived to be somebody coming out of the toilet. Before I knew it, I had fired four shots at the door.’

  Roux didn’t stop his client here in order to explore this further or for him to describe to the court exactly what he meant. That was left to Nel.

  Gerrie Nel wanted Oscar to apologise for what he had done and to accept that his conduct had led to the death of another human being.

  ‘You are a model for sportsmen, disabled and able-body sportsmen all over the world,’ suggested Nel, testing the Blade Runner on how he regarded himself now that he was accused of murder.

  Accused: I think I was, M’Lady. I made a terrible mistake and …

  Nel: You … you made a mistake. You killed a person, that is what you did. Is it not?

  Accused: I made a mistake.

  Nel: You killed Reeva Steenkamp, that is what you did.

  Accused: I made a mistake, M’Lady.

  Nel: You repeating it three times, what was your mistake?

  Accused: My mistake is that I took Reeva’s life, M’Lady.

  Nel: You killed her. You shot and killed her. Will you not take responsibility for that?

  Accused: I did, M’Lady.

  Nel: Then say it then. Say yes. I killed … I shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp.

  Accused: I did, M’Lady.

  While Nel accepted this response, the accused didn’t say, ‘I shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp,’ and he never did in his evidence. For Nel it was about accountability, getting the accused to take responsibility for his actions and to verbalise such conduct in active language. Oscar would say Reeva ‘lost her life’, refer to her death as her ‘passing’, that he ‘took her life’, and in his apology to her parents he referred to the ‘tragedy’, but he never once said, ‘I killed Reeva.’

  For a full five days, the prosecutor worked on Oscar in a deliberate attempt to snare him. He would spend a short period on one subject and, just as Oscar was growing in confidence, Nel would divert to another topic only to return to the original issue when it was least expected.

  At times, Oscar became frustrated at the repeated questions and became argumentative. Simple prompts resulted in long answers and explanations that didn’t help the accused at all. ‘Let us just answer the questions,’ said Nel at one point early in the cross-examination:

  Nel: I know you want to say a lot of things and it is interesting. You are arguing, you are not answering. Why are you arguing and not answering?

  Accused: I am sorry, My Lady.

  Nel: No, not sorry. Sorry does not answer the question of ‘why’. The question is: Why. Sorry is not an answer to why.

  It was quintessential Nel.

  Oscar stated that many thoughts went through his mind when he heard the window sliding open, which he believed to have been caused by an intruder gaining access to the bathroom. Top of his mind was his vulnerability. ‘I did not have any way of defending myself without my prosthetic legs on. So I ran for my firearm,’ he said.

  The athlete also confirmed that that morning he was in ‘full combat recon mode’, in which he is trained to ‘go and seek the perceived threat’. ‘That is what I tried to do. I did not have my prosthetic legs on, like I had when I had been trained,’ he said.

  Being on his stumps meant Oscar could not flee the bedroom, as Nel had suggested. ‘My Lady, I have very, very limited mobility on my stumps on a hard surface like tiles,’ he said. It was important for the state to try to get to exactly what Oscar meant when he said ‘before I knew it, I had fired four shots at the door’ and why he opened fire, so the prosecutor returned to this question on several occasions throughout the cross-examination.

  Oscar provided several different answers and
versions to the questions related to what happened in the bathroom in those seconds leading up to the shots. Various exchanges between Nel and Oscar unfolded as follows:

  Nel: So you never intended to shoot the intruders?

  Accused: I never intended to shoot anyone, My Lady. I got a fright from a noise that I heard inside the toilet. I perceived it to be somebody coming out to attack me. That is what I believed.

  […]

  Nel: The fact is, did you shoot at the intruders with the intention to shoot them?

  Accused: My Lady, I shot because I was at that point with that … that split moment I believed somebody was coming out to attack me, that is what made me fire my … out of fear. I did not have time to think. I discharged my firearm.

  […]

  Nel: Mr Pistorius, did your gun accidentally go off, or did you fire at the intruders? It is easy.

  Accused: My Lady, my firearm was in my possession. I was … I had my finger on the trigger … it was an accident what happened. I agree with that. I did not intend to shoot anyone. I shot … I fired my firearm before I could think. Before I even had a moment to comprehend what was happening, I believed someone was coming out the toilet.

  […]

  Nel: Why did you fire?

  Accused: Because I heard a noise coming from inside the toilet. That I interpreted at that split moment as somebody coming out to attack me, M’Lady.

  Nel: We … luckily this is all on record. So … and when you heard that … you just started shooting?

  Accused: That is … [interrupted]

  Nel: Or accidentally your fingers pulled the trigger.

  Accused: I started shooting at that point, M’Lady.

  Nel: At the intruders?

  Accused: At the door, M’Lady.

  Nel: But in your mind, at the intruders.

  Accused: It is what I perceived as a intruder coming out to attack me, M’Lady.

  On several occasions Oscar said he genuinely believed his life was in danger, that he was going to be attacked and that he was protecting Reeva. In the bail application Oscar stated, ‘I heard movement inside the toilet,’ which precipitated him firing the shots. Nel wanted to know exactly what this movement or sound was that prompted him to open fire. This noise would be described later by one of the athlete’s expert witnesses as the ‘third startle’ and what prompted him to respond by pulling the trigger: