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Post by Admin on Mar 8, 2014 1:47:33 GMT
Pistorius' sister, Aimee, right, speaks with members of Reeva Steenkamp's family in Pretoria on March 6. Oscar Pistorius fired a gun through the roof of a car in a fit of petulance after an argument with a police officer, his ex-girlfriend told a court on Friday. As the Paralympic sprinter stared coldly at her from the dock, Samantha Taylor testified that he carried a gun with him "all the time" when they were dating. On one of these counts, Taylor, who was nervous and tearful on the witness stand, claimed that an angry Pistorius had fired his pistol out of a car's open sun-roof after a heated argument with a police officer in September 2012. Taylor said she, Pistorius and a friend, Darren Fresco, had been pulled over by a policeman for speeding. When he saw Pistorius's pistol lying on the car seat, the officer picked it up and emptied its magazine on to the floor of the car, prompting an outburst from Pistorius, she said. When they were allowed to go on their way, Pistorius and Fresco started to joke about shooting out a "robot" – a South African term for a traffic light. "Oscar was very angry," said Taylor, who was sitting in the back seat at the time. "Thereafter they were joking around and saying they wanted to shoot a robot. Two minutes after, I saw Oscar take his gun and shoot out of the car roof. A very loud sound. They both laughed." Pistorius' relatives wait inside the courtroom on March 3. Taylor described two other incidents in which Pistorius drew his gun. The first was when he jumped out of his car at the gateway of his Pretoria housing complex and put his gun to the window of a black BMW that appeared to have been following him. The second was when he woke up in the middle of the night after hearing a bang in the bathroom. "There was one occasion when something hit the bathroom window and Oscar woke me up and asked me if I heard it," Taylor said, noting that the noise had probably been generated by a passing storm. "He got up with his gun and walked out of the room." Taylor said she was 17 when she started dating Pistorius and spent four nights a week at his home. Asked why they broke up on 4 November 2012, Taylor told the court: "He cheated on me with Reeva Steenkamp."
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Post by Admin on Mar 11, 2014 6:11:40 GMT
Oscar Pistorius threw up in court today ... several times ... as a pathologist detailed the injuries he found on Reeva Steenkamp's body after she was shot, in gruesome detail. Pistorius was given a bucket to puke into during the testimony ... and used it quite frequently. In between vomit sessions, the Olympian was seen rocking back and forth, crying and covering his ears with his hands. As for the testimony, Professor Gert Saayman detailed the bullet wounds he found on Steenkamp following her death ... saying she was shot on the top of the head, in the right elbow, in the right hip and left hand. Saayman said the head would have incapacitated Steenkamp immediately. He also said the ammo, Black Talon bullets, are the kind that "expand and mushroom" on impact for maximum damage. At one point, the judge asked Pistorius' lawyer if he was going to be able to compose himself and stay in the courtroom. Oscar said he wanted to continue ... and was allowed to stay.
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Post by Admin on Mar 12, 2014 1:28:11 GMT
Darren Fresco on the stand. Fresco is Oscar Pistorius' friend. He's the owner of the gun that went off during their visit at Tasha's restaurant, while in Pistorius' hands. Darren Fresco told the court that Mr Pistorius had fired a gun through a sunroof and again inside a crowded restaurant. In his testimony, Mr Fresco said: "We had been to the shooting range before and I knew he had a big love of weapons." Mr Pistorius denies intentionally killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on 14 February 2013 and says he mistook her for a burglar. Mr Fresco was with Mr Pistorius when he fired a gun through the sunroof of a moving car in 2012. Mr Pistorius shot at a traffic light after a row with traffic police. Asked of his reaction, Mr Fresco told Judge Thokozile Masipa: "Apologies my lady, but I asked if he was 'mad', he just laughed." Mr Pistorius had reportedly been angry because a traffic police officer had touched his gun, which lay on the passenger seat when the car was pulled over for speeding. "Then there was an altercation, a verbal altercation between the accused and the metro police officer," said Mr Fresco. "You can't just touch another man's gun", the athlete was said to have remarked. In another shooting incident, Mr Pistorius asked Mr Fresco to take the rap on his behalf after discharging a firearm inside a packed Johannesburg restaurant. "Being a friend I said I would, with pleasure," Mr Fresco said.
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Post by Admin on Mar 12, 2014 23:22:32 GMT
A police officer takes part in the reconstruction of the hitting of the door with the cricket bat on March 12. South African police colonel J.G. Vermeulen took the stand to discuss marks on a cricket bat and a bent steel plate found in the bathroom door after the athlete shot model Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine's Day last year. Wielding the cricket bat in his hands, Vermuelen squatted down before swinging it at the actual wooden door in a court reconstruction to show the angle of the marks. He said the location of the spots on the door was consistent with Pistorius not wearing his prosthetic legs. "From the forensic evidence, he was on his stumps," Vermeulen said. The court heard that the door was intact before the shots were fired. Under cross-examination, Vermeulen said the first and only time he went to the crime scene was on March 8, 2013, nearly a month after the shooting. Asked about a mark on the door which he did not investigate, he said it was not from a cricket bat. Roux asserted it was the mark of a prosthetic leg kicking the door with a sock on and that fabric remained in the mark on the door. Vermeulen was unwilling to accept that that was the only possible explanation. Vermeulen told the court there were footprints consistent with police shoes on the bathroom door at one point and photos of this were shown. They were later removed and Vermeulen said he did not know how. He said that from photos, he knew the door was removed from its hinges and left on the floor for some time. When Roux suggested they were wiped off by someone who did not know the importance of police procedure, Vermeulen chuckled. Close-up photographs of the damaged door were shown in court, as well as scuffs on the autographed cricket bat, prompting a Tweet from former South African test cricketer Herschelle Gibbs: "Just saw my signature on the bat used by the accused in Oscar trial... ".
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Post by Admin on Mar 13, 2014 23:00:42 GMT
During the prosecution’s presentation Thursday, Pistorius threw up after two images of slain girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp were shown in court. The photos were taken shortly after the young woman was killed on Valentine’s Day 2013. Pistorius got emotional and began vomiting uncontrollably before a recess was taken to make sure the photos were removed from the slide show. South African Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius was shocked during Thursday’s testimony when images of a bloodied Reeva Steenkamp were shown on a projector screen. The sight of his murdered girlfriend made Oscar Pistorius sick to his stomach — again. For the second time this week, the South African sprinter buried his face in a plastic bucket when the evidence at his murder trial became too much for him to bear. This time it, photographs of a bloody Reeva Steenkamp that flashed across a courtroom screen Thursday were what made the fallen Olympian vomit. It was not immediately clear why the gory photos of the slain swimsuit model was part of the PowerPoint presentation of crime scene evidence, but when Pistorius saw them he sobbed loudly and began retching.
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