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Oscar Pistorius

Pretoria — Oscar Pistorius cried and prayed as Reeva Steenkamp lay dying in his home, the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria heard yesterday.
“Oscar was crying, saying please let her live,” radiologist Johan Stipp said to questioning from prosecutor Gerrie Nel.“He was saying he would dedicate his life to God if she will only live.”

Stipp, who was woken by screaming and subsequently heard gunshots, described how he drove to Pistorius’s home nearby and found Steenkamp on the floor at the bottom of the stairs on the ground floor.

Nel asked him to look at pictures in a file in front of him. The images were not shown on the television screens in court.

Stipp, who told the court he was a doctor, rubbed his chin as he looked at the photos and confirmed that they were of the woman as he found her lying in the house.
He said he knelt down beside her.

“I tried to open her airway and look for any signs of life. She had no pulse in her neck and no peripheral pulse.”

He said Pistorius was kneeling next to her, two of his fingers in her mouth, trying to open her airway.

“She was clenching down on Oscar’s fingers,” said Stipp. “I opened her right eyelid. Her pupil was fixed, dilated and her cornea was already drying out. To me it was obvious that she was dying. I noticed blood in her hair and brain tissue mingled with that.”

As Pistorius listened to this he bent over in the dock, his hands pressed against the back of his head.

Court adjourned for lunch at 12.50.

Pistorius is accused of the murder of Steenkamp. He is also charged with illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition, and two counts of discharging a firearm in public.
He allegedly fired a shot from a Glock pistol under a table at a Johannesburg restaurant in January 2013.

In September 2010 he allegedly shot through the open sunroof of a car with his 9mm pistol while driving with friends in Modderfontein.

Meanwhile, Steenkamp suffered a “devastating” head wound, which would have made it impossible for her to scream, the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria heard yesterday. “It was a terrible, serious, devastating head wound,” Barry Roux, for Pistorius, told the seventh State witness, radiologist Johan Stipp.

He was making the point that Stipp could not have heard a woman screaming in the early hours of 14 February last year. “A person with that injury would not have been able to scream,” said Roux.

Stipp’s home, in the Silver Woods Country Estate, Pretoria, is near Pistorius’s. He testified that he woke up around 03.00AM to what sounded like gunshots, then heard a woman screaming and then three more “bangs”.

Prosecutor Gerrie Nel rose and objected to Roux’s phrasing.He said it could not be stated as a fact that the first shot killed Steenkamp, thus making it impossible for her to scream. Stipp was the first doctor to see Steenkamp’s body lying in Pistorius’s home.

Pistorius’s sister Aimee approached family members of Steenkamp yesterday morning. During a tea break in the North Gauteng High Court, Aimee stood talking to the athlete, dressed in a black suit.

A few minutes later, she approached the Steenkamp side of the public gallery. A visibly emotional Aimee sat down next to Steenkamp’s cousin and spoke to her softly.
Steenkamp’s cousin squeezed Aimee’s arm before she got up and returned to her family.

A short while later, Pistorius glanced over the public gallery before exchanging a few words with a photographer sitting next to him.
He then went to chat to his aunt where the two bowed their heads, held hands and said a brief prayer.

Yesterday marks the 12th anniversary of the death of Pistorius’s mother Sheila. During the tea break, Pistorius chatted to his family and his lawyers and then sat by himself at the front of the court eating a sandwich. — Sapa