Sarah Lyall &
Dan Bilefskyapril
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n electrifying testimony at his murder trial here, the Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius on Tuesday offered in vivid detail his version of what happened the night he shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, saying he mistook her for an intruder.
The two had enjoyed a cozy evening together and fallen asleep in bed, he said, until it all went wrong.
“My lady, that’s the moment that everything changed,” he told the judge, speaking of the instant he heard noises in the middle of the night. “I thought that a burglar had entered my home. Initially I froze. I didn’t know what to do. The first thing that ran through my mind is that I needed to protect myself,” he said, “that I needed to protect Reeva and I.”Mr. Pistorius, 27, the world’s most celebrated disabled athlete, is accused of premeditated murder in the death of Ms. Steenkamp, 29, whom he shot four times through the locked door of the bathroom at his home. The prosecution, which rested its case late last month, has sought to present him as an angry, jealous gun zealot who killed his girlfriend in a fit of rage.
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Oscar Pistorius, center, walked toward the courtroom in Pretoria on Tuesday. Credit Themba Hadebe/Associated Press
The defense, which began presenting its case this week, is seeking to show that Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp’s relationship was loving and supportive and that what happened in the early hours of Feb. 14, 2013, was a horrible tragedy.
Though he has given his version of events in written submissions to the court, Tuesday was the first time Mr. Pistorius, who has been distraught through much of the trial, presented his account on the stand.
In his narrative, he grabbed his gun from under the bed and — walking precariously on his stumps because he had removed his prosthetic legs before going to bed — made his way toward the bathroom, screaming all the while.
“It was at this point I was overcome with fear,” he said, his voice quavering. Several times, the judge asked him to speak louder because she was having trouble hearing him. He said he was worried that the intruder or intruders could have lunged at him at any moment, as he was not wearing his prosthetic legs.
“I started screaming and shouting for the burglars to get out of my house,” he said. “I shouted for Reeva to get on the floor. I shouted for her to phone the police.”
Mr. Pistorius described how he “scuffled” toward the bathroom, fearful that an intruder was in the bathroom. “Before I knew it, I fired four shots at the door,” he said, choking back sobs. “My ears were ringing.” He said it had not occurred to him at that point that Ms. Steenkamp could have been in the bathroom. He said that he went to search for her in the bedroom and could not find her.
“I didn’t want to believe it could be Reeva in toilet,” he said. “I was crying out for Reeva. I was screaming.”
When he broke open the door and saw Reeva, he said, he burst into tears.
As Mr. Pistorius recalled the moment, he sobbed uncontrollably. The judge adjourned the trial until Wednesday.
In earlier testimony, Mr. Pistorius said he had believed Ms. Steenkamp was still in bed, having spoken to her before he got up to move some fans that were positioned outside the bedroom. The fans were on, he said, because his air-conditioning system was broken.
In an electrifying moment, after the defense asked for a brief recess, Mr. Pistorius re-entered the courtroom dressed in clothes similar to those he had been wearing the night of the killing — shorts and a T-shirt. He stood up to show how tall he is when wearing his prosthetic legs and then, in full view of the packed courtroom, removed those legs and walked a few yards on his stumps, considerably shorter and more vulnerable than he is when people see him in public.
That was intended to shed additional light on Mr. Pistorius’s testimony about his state of mind the night Ms. Steenkamp died.
As was his habit, he said, he had removed his prosthetic legs before going to bed, locked his bedroom door and propped a cricket bat nearby to keep intruders out because the lock was not a strong one. There was an alarm system in the house, he said, but it was not working well.
Mr. Pistorius said that the day before Ms. Steenkamp’s death had been a routine one in the couple’s relationship, that they had eaten dinner together and that he had helped her review a management contract. He planned to give her a bracelet the next day, Valentine’s Day, he said.
Breaking into tears, Mr. Pistorius related how he had come home that afternoon to find a Valentine’s gift from Ms. Steenkamp wrapped on the table. She told him not to open it until the next day, but he only unwrapped it months later.
The present, he said, was a picture frame with four photographs of the couple in it.
The testimony came at the end of a morning in which the defense sought to portray Mr. Pistorius as a supportive and attentive boyfriend, whose quarrels with Ms. Steenkamp ended with apologies and reconciliation. Mr. Pistorius read messages that were peppered with smiley faces, kisses and pet names. “I’m crazy about you,” he wrote in one message.
Mr. Pistorius said that he had been “besotted” with Ms. Steenkamp from their first dates, that the relationship grew as he advised her on her career, and that they shared common interests, including sports cars. “I was very keen on Reeva. I think I was maybe more into her than she was at times with me,” he said.
He began his testimony on Monday with an apology to Ms. Steenkamp’s family, who sat stone-faced in the courtroom. Clearly shaken, he spoke so softly that he was nearly inaudible at times.
“There hasn’t been a moment since this tragedy happened that I haven’t thought about your family,” Mr. Pistorius said, his voice quavering. Pausing as he tried to keep his composure, he went on, “I can’t imagine the pain and the sorrow and the loss I caused your family.”
Earlier, he tried to offer to the Steenkamps a rationale, of sorts, for his actions.
“I was simply trying to protect Reeva,” he said. “I can promise that when she went to bed that night she felt loved.”
Mr. Pistorius faces 25 years in prison if convicted of the most serious of the charges he faces: premeditated murder.
Mr. Pistorius is considered a national hero in South Africa for his speed and grace competing against able-bodied athletes as well as other Paralympians. He and Ms. Steenkamp were fixtures in Johannesburg’s celebrity scene, and Mr. Pistorius spoke on Monday of his love for her.
“I was taken aback, bowled over by how much I felt for her,” he said, so much so that he decided early in 2013 to move to Johannesburg to be closer to her. Eager to sell his house in Pretoria, he hired a contractor to spruce it up and make repairs. The work included fixing a broken window that, on the night Ms. Steenkamp died, had a ladder propped outside it, in preparation for the workmen’s arrival. The defense hopes that fact, too, will help present a plausible case that Mr. Pistorius believed someone had broken into his house.
The prosecution has sought to present Mr. Pistorius as irascible, possessive and trigger-happy. But on Monday he just looked shattered, overwhelmed and contrite.
After several hours of questioning, Mr. Pistorius said he had not slept on Sunday night, his mind racing and full of worry. “I’m just really tired at the moment,” he said. “The weight of this is extremely overbearing.”
Sarah Lyall reported from Pretoria, and Dan Bilefsky from Paris.
Courtesy: The New York Times
