The Times
Jerome Starkey, Pretoria
Oscar Pistorius was on his knees bargaining with God when a doctor found him trying to staunch his girlfriend’s fatal gunshot wounds, the Olympic sprinter’s murder trial heard today.
In the first account from the scene of killing, Dr Johan Stephanus Stipp said he feared Pistorius might commit suicide he was so distraught.
The neighbour also said the lights were on - not off, as the South African runner had claimed. Mr Pistorius, 27, does not deny shooting Miss Steenkamp, who he said he mistook for an intruder. However he said it was pitch black when he opened fire because he had been too scared to turn on the lights.
“Oscar was crying all the time. He prayed to God, ‘Please let her live. She must not die!’” Dr Stipp told the court.
“He said at one stage that he would dedicate his life and her life to God, if she would only live.”
Like three neighbours called to testify already, Dr Stipp was adamant he heard a woman screaming and then a series of loud bangs, which he thought were gunshots.
The defence maintains those noises were not gunshots, but sounds made by a cricket bat as Mr Pistorius broke down the toilet door when he realised his mistake. The screams, the lawyers said, had to be the athlete’s because Miss Steenkamp was already dead.
“When you heard screams it could not have been, it is medically impossible, it could not have been the deceased,” Barry Roux argued for the defence.
The case appears to hinge on how the couple spent their final moments. Mr Pistorius insists it was a loving night in. His neighbour Dr Michelle Burger said she heard the “bloodcurdling screams” of a terrified woman. Her husband Charl Johnson, who was 177m from Mr Pistorius’ house, also said he heard a woman scream.
A third neighbour, Estelle van der Merwe, who lived less than 100m away, said she woke at 1.56am, more than an hour before the gunshots, and heard a couple arguing. (Read more...)
