Note: Because Oscar is an inspiration to millions including me, his plight is on my mind, making it is hard to ignore the news about him, and to include an occasional update here. Unfortunately, it is already beginning to seem reminiscent of the O.J. trial, in that Oscar has a near-celebrity team of defense lawyers defending a celebrity client with an uncorroborated story....
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In Affidavit at Bail Hearing, Track Star Denies He Intended to Kill Girlfriend
PRETORIA, South Africa — Early on Feb. 14, Oscar Pistorius says, he heard a strange noise coming from inside his bathroom, climbed out of bed, grabbed his 9-millimeter pistol, hobbled on his stumps to the door and fired four shots.
Prosecutors painted a far different picture, one of a calculated killer, a world-renowned athlete who had the presence of mind and calm to strap on his prosthetic legs, walk 20 feet to the bathroom door and open fire as his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, cowered inside, behind a locked door.
“The applicant shot and killed an unarmed, innocent woman,” Gerrie Nel, the chief prosecutor, said in court on Tuesday. That, Mr. Nel argued, amounted to premeditated murder, a charge that could send Mr. Pistorius to prison for life.
In court, Mr. Pistorius, a Paralympic track star who competed against able-bodied athletes at the London Olympics despite having lost both his lower legs as an infant...
As the defense and prosecution laid out their competing versions of the shooting, some details were beyond dispute.
1) Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp were alone in the house, having spent the evening there.
2) Around 3 a.m., Mr. Pistorius shot Ms. Steenkamp through the bathroom door, fatally wounding her.
3) He broke down the door and carried her down the stairs, where she died in the foyer of his upscale home in a highly secured compound.
Magistrate Nair ruled Tuesday that the case would be treated as the most serious kind of offense, which means bail will be granted only if the defense can prove extraordinary circumstances requiring it.
The court proceedings, though they concerned only whether Mr. Pistorius would receive bail, offered the first real glimpse into what unfolded at his home on the day of the shooting.
In the early morning hours, he said, he woke up to move a fan from the balcony and to close the sliding doors in the bedroom.
“I heard a noise in the bathroom and realized that someone was in the bathroom,” he said. “I felt a sense of terror rushing over me.”
He had already said in the affidavit that he feared South Africa’s rampant violent crime, and later added that he was worried because there were no bars on the window to the bathroom.
Construction workers had left ladders in his garden, he said.
Mr. Nel, the prosecutor, argued that given the sequence of events, the conclusion that Mr. Pistorius intentionally killed Ms. Steenkamp was unshakable.
Questions about the credibility of Mr. Pistorius’s account of the killing are sure to arise.
Why did he not notice that Ms. Steenkamp was not in bed?
Why did Ms. Steenkamp not respond to his shouting by identifying herself in the bathroom?
With South Africa’s high rates of violent crime, many people here heard Mr. Pistorius’s fears of an intruder sympathetically.
“When things go bump in the night in Johannesburg or Pretoria, it is a scary moment,” said Antony Altbeker, a researcher who has written extensively about violent crime in South Africa.
Source: By LYDIA POLGREEN
Pistorius Denies Murdering Girlfriend - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/world/africa/pistorius-returns-to-court-seeking-bail-on-murder-charge.html?_r=0
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