PRETORIA // Shaking with emotion, the father of the murdered girlfriend of Oscar Pistorius demanded the athlete be made to “pay for his crime”.
Barry Steenkamp, 73, broke down on Tuesday while addressing the hearing which will determine the sentence Pistorius must serve for murdering Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day 2013.
“It has been very difficult for me to forgive ... I feel that Oscar has to pay for what he did. He has to pay for his crime,” he said, his eyes brimming with tears and his voice shaking. He is haunted by his daughter’s last moments. “What she must have gone through in those split seconds — she must have been in so much fear and pain. That is what I think of, all the time,” he said. He was also d convinced that Pistorius and Reeva has argued the on the night she died.
Mr Steenkamp, a former racehorse trainer, said the loss of his daughter has contributed to his heart and other problems and despite what he described as her “stone-faced” demeanour in public, his wife June grieves just as deeply. “I hear her at night. I hear her crying. I hear her talking to Reeva,” he said.
Pistorius held his head in his hands and appeared to be sobbing during Mr Steenkamp’s testimony at the High Court in the South African capital Pretoria.
The 29-year-old Paralympian, nicknamed Blade Runner because of his futuristic-looking artificial legs, shot Reeva Steenkamp four times through a bathroom door in the army hours of Valentine’s Day, claiming he thought she was a burglar. After a trial lasting seven months in 2014, Pistorius was acquitted of murder but convicted of culpable homicide, or manslaughter, of the model and law graduate, and sentenced to five years. But he served only one year and was released last October into house arrest at his uncle’s home.
However, the manslaughter conviction was overturned last year by an appeal court which found Pistorius guilty of murder. In March, the athlete’s lawyers failed to have the murder conviction overturned and Pistorius now faces a minimum 15 years in prison, although the term can be reduced in certain circumstances at the judge’s discretion.
By coincidence, Judge Thokozile Masipa, who originally cleared Pistorius of murder, will also decide his sentence after the hearing which is due to continue until Friday.
Pistorius’ legal defence team have sought to present him as a broken man, producing expert witnesses to attest that his mental state has deteriorated drastically and that he needs to be in hospital rather than jail.
Among the character witnesses called on Tuesday was Pistorius’ pastor and the mother of a boy born with no legs. Ebba Gudmundsdottir, from Iceland, told how Pistorius had befriended her family when she was pregnant and subsequently became an Inspiration” to her son, once giving him a gold medal, saying, “This is for you, champion.” They family had gone to watch him compete three times in the Paralympics, she said.
Marius Nel, Pistorius’s pastor, told the court that Pistorius was “very excited and positive” about becoming involved in church projects to help disadvantaged children with sports training. The pastor also said he had found Pistorius to be “a broken man” when he visited him in prison but argued he cold still make a valuable contribution to society.
But the prosecution claim Pistorius has not changed at all from the angry man who shot Reeva Steenkamp. Far from shutting himself away, he had given a TV interview, said chief prosecutor Gerrie Nel. Prison nurse Charlotte Mashabane, claimed Pistorius had been a difficult inmate and had argued with officials, shouting and banging her desk in a dispute over medication.
The year before he killed Steenkamp, Pistorius became the first double-amputee to race at Olympic level when he appeared at the London 2012 games and the downfall of a flag-bearer for the disabled gripped the world.
* Associated Press and Agence France Presse
