What does fate have in store for Oscar Pistorius?
Talk of “bloodcurdling screams” and shots on the night the athlete killed his model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp on the dawn of Valentine’s Day last year took centre stage on Monday in the first of testimony in the murder trial of South African amputee track star Oscar Pistorius, also known as the Blade Runner.
“Something terrible was happening at that house,” Michelle Burger testified.
“Her shouts, her screams were petrifying,” she said later.
Michelle was the only witness to testify on Monday in the trial that is expected to last a few weeks. Testimony was scheduled to resume Tuesday morning.
Under questioning by prosecutors, Michelle 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.”
Michelle said her husband called the police and she later told her husband the she feared the woman had witnessed her husband being shot “because after he screamed, we didn’t hear him.”
Language barriers caused problems after the lunch break as defence attorney Barry Roux pressed Michelle on her testimony during the cross-examination. She frequently had to help her Afrikaans interpreter to translate her words in English before she eventually opt to speak in her native language altogether.
Barry questioned Michelle’s timeline of events and what she heard, asking if the “bang” sound she heard might not have been gunshots, but rather a cricket bat bashing at a bathroom door.
Michelle stood firm with her answers by saying she had clearly heard gunshots, testily answering Barry’s questions about timing saying “she didn’t sit there with a stopwatch and take down the timing of each shot.”
Barry also suggested that the screams Michelle had construed as a woman’s screams could have been the high-pitched screams of a terrified Oscar.
“I’m 100% certain I heard two different people that evening,” Michelle responded.
As the trial starts, Oscar made a non guilty plea to murdering Reeva inside his house a year ago. He also pleaded not guilty to several weapon-related charges.
The trial is expected to take about three weeks as Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa has to hear the case and deliberate before deciding if Oscar mistook Reeva for a buglar, as he says, or viciously killed her.
South Africa abolished jury trials in 1969.
The blade runner is faced with one charge of premeditated murder and a firearms charge linked with Reeva’s murder, as well as two separate gun indictments from 2012.
Oscar is accused of shooting a 9 mm handgun out of the sunroof of his car in one incident and authorities say he illegally shot a Glock 27 in an outdoor cafe in 2012 in another incident. A friend of the athlete told CNN that Oscar was showing the gun a friend when it accidentally opened fire.
Premeditated murder carries a mandatory life sentence with a minimum of 25 years in South Africa. Oscar could also get a five year sentence for each gun indictment and 15 years for the firearm charge.
If he isn’t convicted of premeditated murder, the sprinter could face a lesser charge of “culpable homicide,” a crime based on negligence, and could be looking at up to 15 years on that charge, experts say.
The It Couple
Oscar, now 27, and Reeva, 29, were a young, attractive and high-profiled couple in South Africa’s elite social circles.
The Blade Runner has won six Paralympic gold medals and became the first double amputee runner to compete in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Model girlfriend, Reeva, was a cover girl soon to star in a TV reality show, on her way to becoming a celebrity in her own right.
However, everything changed before dawn on Valentine’s Day 2013, as Reeva lay lifeless in a pool of blood on the floor of her boyfriend’s house in an upscale gated community in Pretoria.
Was it cold blooded murder or a tragic mistake? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
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