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Post by Admin on Mar 3, 2014 1:43:15 GMT
The double-amputee athlete was recorded firing weapons at a firing range some time before he fatally shot his model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, at his Pretoria, South Africa, home last year. Blade Runner Oscar Pistorius showed his pistol prowess by blowing apart a watermelon with a single shot sometime before he gunned down his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, according to video taken at a shooting range. “It’s a lot softer than brain but ... it’s like a zombie stopper,” said a man whose voice “sounds very much” like Pistorius, according to Sky News. The revelation of the video showing Pistorius blasting a shotgun and handgun at the firing range comes as his murder trial is slated to begin Monday in the Valentine’s Day 2013 death of Steenkamp. In the Sky News video, Pistorius — wearing sunglasses and gun range noise-muffling headphones — fired a shotgun four times. The double-amputee track star then pointed a silver handgun at the watermelon. He gripped the silver gun with two hands and squeezed off one shot that blew the melon to bits. Gleeful shouts and laughter are heard from unidentified people in the background. South African rugby star Francois Hougaard is seen in the video with Pistorius. Hougaard and Steenkamp dated before she became romantically involved with Pistorius.
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Post by Admin on Mar 4, 2014 1:33:52 GMT
Talk of "bloodcurdling screams" and shots in the night took center stage Monday in the first day of testimony in the murder trial of South African amputee track star Oscar Pistorius, who killed his model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, last year. Burger was the only witness Monday in a trial that is expected to last a few weeks. Testimony was scheduled to resume Tuesday morning. Under questioning by prosecutors, Burger told the court that she heard a woman's screams and a man yelling for help. "Just after 3, I woke up from a woman's terrible screams," she said. "Then I also heard a man screaming for help. Three times he yelled for help." Burger said her husband called authorities. She later told her husband that she feared the woman had witnessed her husband being shot "because after he screamed, we didn't hear him." Olympic and Paralympic track star Oscar Pistorius stands in the dock during his trial for the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria. Roux questioned Burger's timeline of events and what she heard, asking if the "bang" sounds she heard might not have been gunshots, but rather a cricket bat bashing at a bathroom door. She answered that she had clearly heard gunshots, testily answering Roux's questions about timing, saying she "didn't sit there with a stopwatch and take down the timing of each shot." Roux also suggested that the screams she had interpreted as being a woman's might have been the high-pitched screams of a terrified Pistorius. "I'm 100% certain I heard two different people that evening," she responded.
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Post by Admin on Mar 4, 2014 23:18:24 GMT
A defense attorney Tuesday tried to poke holes in the highly emotional testimony of the first witness in the murder trial of Olympian double-amputee Oscar Pistorius, as another witness said she also heard screams the night model Reeva Steenkamp was killed. Estelle van der Merwe, the second witness, was also feeling the pressure of her part in the high-profile trial. She seemed to be struggling to breathe as she delivered her initial account. “Relax,” judge Thokozile Masipa told her. “You can do this.” “I woke up in the morning at 1.56am to sounds of someone talking loudly and fighting,” Mrs van der Merwe told the court. “It lasted about an hour.” Speaking through an Afrikaans interpreter, the witness said she was “irritated” because her son had exams the next morning, but she put a pillow over her head and tried to go back to sleep. An hour later, she said she heard four “explosions or gunshots”, followed by “total silence”. “After I heard the four shots, I heard my husband waking up,” she said. “I asked my husband what that was - he said that they were firearm sounds, gunshots.” June Steenkamp arrives at the High Court in Pretoria, March 3, 2014. Mrs der Merwe said her husband got up and looked out of the window but he couldn’t see anything. They then heard a “commotion” and someone “crying out loudly”. “I asked my husband who was crying like that and he said it was Oscar,” she said. “To me, it sounded like a woman’s voice.”
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Post by Admin on Mar 5, 2014 14:36:08 GMT
Reeva Steenkamp's mother has said she attended the first day of the murder trial of Oscar Pistiorius because it was important that he saw her in court. But June Steenkamp said the paralympian walked straight past her, and appeared not to notice her. "I wanted to see him and him to see me," she told ITV News. "But he didn't look at me or anything. He just walked straight and looked ahead." The grieving 67-year-old lives in Port Elizabeth and travelled to South Africa's capital especially for the first day of proceedings. "The whole point was he must see me, that I'm there," she said. "I'm her mother and you know, what happened to her was terrible. And I wanted him to see me there, that I am there representing Reeva." June said that hearing evidence about her daughter's death was "very traumatic, very hard". Oscar Pistorius broke down in court upon hearing the Reeva was severely brain damaged following the first gun shot wound to the head "I tried to keep strong. There was one occasion where I didn't and I had a little breakdown, you know where they were talking about Reeva, what she went through and how she was traumatised. You can imagine. She's locked herself in the toilet and she's been shot and she's in pain… I wish I could have been there to protect her. That's my child that I gave birth to and it's hard for me that she's dead, that she's gone. That was the time I broke down." Reeva's mother have previously said that she would only attend the first day of the trial because she "could not bear" hearing graphic evidence about how her child died. "I couldn't go through that every day," she said. "We just want to know the truth."
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Post by Admin on Mar 7, 2014 5:52:59 GMT
Oscar Pistorius' emotional -- sometimes even theatrical -- reactions to grisly witness testimony show a man who appears to be deeply disturbed about the night he claims to have accidentally shot and killed his girlfriend. As his premeditated murder trial has gotten underway this week in Pretoria, South Africa this week, the Paralympic Blade Runner has sobbed, covered his ears and hung his head as witness after witness has testified about the night Reeva Steenkamp died. Oscar Pistorius covers his ears and hangs his head while listening to evidence from a witness speaking about the morning of the shooting of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Oscar Pistorius puts his hand to his face in court on the fourth day of his trial. The day also marked the 12th anniversary of his mother's death. Judge Thokozile Masipa, who will decide the athlete's guilt or innocence, will likely be looking at Pistorius' reactions, Jules Epstein, a law professor at Delaware's Widener University and former criminal defense attorney, told ABCNews.com. "If there is any sense at all that he is faking it, an experienced judge who picks that up will have trouble ignoring it," Epstein said.
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