Oscar Pistorius recoiled in horror on the witness stand on Wednesday as a prosecutor showed him a grisly photograph of his dead girlfriend, telling him: “You shot and killed her. Won’t you take responsibility for that?”
The Paralympic sprinter went on to claim that he had not intended to kill anyone when he fired four gunshots into a toilet door at his home, but acted out of fear before he had time to think.
The evidence was heard on the day that many observers of South Africa’s biggest murder trial had been waiting for: fierce prosecutor Gerrie Nel’s cross-examination of Pistorius on his claim that he killed girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp by accident last year after mistaking her for an intruder.
But few were prepared for Nel’s all-guns-blazing approach. To the defence team’s surprise he showed a video, first broadcast on Sky News, of Pistorius firing a gun at a watermelon and saying off-camera: “It’s a lot softer than brains. But … it’s like a zombie stopper.”
Nel put it to the once celebrated sportsman: “You know that the same happened to Reeva’s head. It exploded. Have a look. I’m going to show you, Mr Pistorius, it had the exact same effect, the bullet that went into her head.”
There was gasps and murmurs in the courtroom as, suddenly without warning, multiple TV screens showed a graphic police photo of Steenkamp’s head, turned to the left with her eyes closed. There was a gruesome mass of tissue on the back and upper parts and her blonde hair was drenched dark with blood.
But Nel thundered: “That’s it. It’s time that you look at it. Have a look there, I know you don’t want to because you don’t want to take responsibility.”
Pistorius, cringing and shielding his eyes from a screen on the witness stand, said through sobs: “I remember. I will not look at a picture where I’m tormented by what I saw and felt that night. As I picked Reeva up, my fingers touched her head. I remember. I don’t have to look at a picture, I was there.”
As so often in the trial, Pistorius then descended into near hysterical crying, his hands over his face as he rocked from side to side, forcing an adjournment. His family, sitting in the public gallery, were visibly appalled by Nel’s combative style and shook their heads in disgust. Defence counsel Barry Roux described the incident as “uncalled for”.
Steenkamp’s mother June, however, did not object. Her lawyer Dup de Bruyn, sitting beside her, explained later: “Gerrie Nel and I have an agreement where he informs me in advance when photographs are going to be shown and I tell Mrs Steenkamp to drop her head. So she didn’t see it.”
Asked if she approved of the photo’s use, De Bruyn replied: “She has no say. She can’t comment on it.”
The drama followed some electrifying opening exchanges when Nel tore into Pistorius: “You still are one of the most recognised faces in the world, do you agree?… You are a model for both disabled and able-bodied sportsmen all over the world.”
Pistorius, careful to keep his eyes fixed on the judge rather than Nel throughout his testimony, replied: “I think I was my lady. I’ve made a terrible mistake and … “
Nel interjected fiercely: “You made a mistake? You killed a person, that’s what you did, isn’t it?”
Pistorius insisted: “I made a mistake.”
Nel pressed: “You killed Reeva Steenkamp, that’s what you did.”
Pistorius told the judge: “My mistake was that I took Reeva’s life, my lady.”
Nel exclaimed: “You killed her! You shot and killed her! Won’t you take responsibility for that?”
Pistorius parried: “I did, my lady.”
Like a dog with a bone, Nel went on: “Then say it then, say ‘Yes, I shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp.'”
Nel then raised the subject of the athlete’s religious faith and whether he lived by Christian principles. “I try to, my lady,” Pistorius responded. “I’m human, I make many faults, I have sins. I am a Christian because of the reason that I’m a sinner, the Lord said he came down for the people that had sins.
“I don’t always think the things I do are right. But as a Christian, you will not lie. I will try not to lie my lady, as I said, I’m human. I’m here to tell the truth.”
As the day wore on Nel went on to aggressively poke holes in details of Pistorius’s version of what happened in the early hours of 14 February last year. The runner conceded that his claim in a statement a year ago that he went out on to a balcony at his home before the shooting was incorrect. Pistorius said he went to the edge of the balcony but not outside.
“My memory isn’t very good at the moment,” he admitted. “I’m under a lot of pressure sitting here. It’s not easy. I’m defending for my life.”
The pugnacious Nel then questioned Pistorius about the moment he opened fire. The athlete repeatedly described it as an accident and insisted he had not intended to kill anyone, even an intruder.
“Before thinking, out of fear, I fired four shots,” he said. “When I realised the scale of what was happening, I stopped firing, and I stood there, and I was in shock.
“I didn’t intend to shoot anyone. 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.”
At the start of the day, Pistorius described his frantic attempts to revive Steenkamp after he found her the toilet cubicle. He said: “I knelt down over Reeva. She was sitting with her weight on top of the toilet bowl. I checked to see if she was breathing and she wasn’t.
“I pulled her weight on to me and I sat there crying for some time. I had her head on my left shoulder and I could feel her blood was running down on me. I could see that her arm was broken. I thought I felt her breathing. She was struggling to breathe.”
He called an ambulance but it was too late. “Reeva had already died whilst I was holding her, before the ambulance arrived, so I knew there was nothing they could do for her.”
A Pistorius family source said that until the trial he has never been able to get through an account of that night, even with his lawyers. “He’s inside it and he keeps getting stuck,” the source said. “It’s the first time we’ve heard the whole story.”
The defence also invited the double-amputee, known as the Blade Runner because of his prosthetic limbs, to walk towards the toilet door, exhibited in the courtroom, and go through the motion of striking it with his cricket bat.
He finished his answers to the defence by saying: “I did not intend to kill Reeva, my lady, or anyone else.”
