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| Oscar Pistorius, leaves the high court in Pretoria, South Africa, Tuesday, April 8, 2014. Pistorius is charged with murder for the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentines Day in 2013. |
PRETORIA, South
Africa (AP) -- A subdued Oscar Pistorius on Tuesday described dinner
at home, chatting and looking at cell phone photos with Reeva Steenkamp
on the last night of her life. Then he erupted in anguished howls and
heaving sobs while testifying at his murder trial about the moments when
he says he realized he shot his girlfriend through a closed toilet
door.
The shocking spectacle of what appeared
to be a tormented man highlighted the drama of Pistorius' inspirational
rise and sudden fall. The South African double-amputee runner captured
the world's attention when he successfully fought for permission to run
in the 2012 Olympics on his carbon-fiber prostheses. The very next year,
he was facing charges for killing the woman he said he loved.
The
court in Pretoria, the South African capital, adjourned because of the
star athlete's breakdown, ending a day in which Pistorius spoke of the
loving aspects of his relationship with Steenkamp in testimony designed
to counter a prosecution picture of him as temperamental and
overbearing, and then outlined his version of the final hours before the
shooting.
"I sat over Reeva and I cried,"
Pistorius said, telling how he broke open the stall door in his bathroom
in the early hours of Feb. 14, 2013 to discover his bloodied girlfriend
slumped in the cubicle. "I don't know how long I was there for."
Pistorius
has said in statements that he shot Steenkamp after mistaking her for
an intruder in his bathroom.
Tuesday marked the first time he has spoken
publicly about the details of the fatal shooting. Prosecutors call
Pistorius' story an intricate lie and maintain he intentionally killed
his 29-year-old girlfriend, a model and reality TV show star, after an
argument.
The 27-year-old Olympian faces a
life sentence with a minimum of 25 years before parole if convicted of
premeditated murder. The judge, Thokozile Masipa, will deliver the
verdict because South Africa does not have a jury system.
Pistorius
has often shown emotion while listening to testimony since the trial
began March 3, burying his head in his hands, weeping and even vomiting
on a couple of occasions. Tuesday's outburst on the witness stand was
his most demonstrative, and it forced a brief adjournment. Pistorius
didn't stand up when the judge left, and also started to wail as he
slumped in his seat. His brother and sister went over to comfort him.
After a while he left the courtroom through a side door, still crying.
When
Masipa returned, she ended proceedings for the day. Pistorius had by
that time come back, jaw clenched, to the witness box. He was composed
when he left the court and walked to a waiting vehicle. The trial was to
reconvene on Wednesday.
Led by defense lawyer
Barry Roux for the second day of his testimony, the runner provided
more detail about his timeline of events leading up to the shooting. He
said the couple had dinner about 7 p.m. and later sat chatting in the
bedroom with the television on, and that Steenkamp showed him some
photographs on her phone. He said he fell asleep between 9 p.m. and 10
p.m. and woke up early the next morning.
At that point, he said, Steenkamp asked him: "Can't you sleep?"
`"No,
I can't,'" Pistorius said he replied. Then he said stepped out to the
balcony to get fans, and when he returned to the darkened bedroom he
heard a noise from the bathroom.
"That's the moment that everything changed," Pistorius testified.
Pistorius
said he felt fearful and vulnerable as he moved to the bathroom,
walking only on his stumps because he had removed his prosthetic legs
before going to bed. He said he was screaming for Steenkamp to call the
police.
"I wasn't sure if someone was going to
come out the toilet and attack me," he said. He also testified he heard
a door slam, which he said he took as "confirmation" that there was an
intruder in the bathroom, and fired four shots at the toilet cubicle
with his 9 mm pistol.
After the shots,
Pistorius said, he searched for Steenkamp in his bedroom, patting the
bed where he says he thought she was in the dark, searching on the floor
next to it where he thought she might be hiding, and also behind the
curtains.
"It was at that point ... that it
first dawned on me that maybe it was Reeva in the toilet," Pistorius
said. He said he screamed for help.
Neighbors
of Pistorius who were called by the prosecution have testified that they
heard a woman's terrified screams before and during what they thought
were gunshots. Some also said they thought they heard a man's voice. The
defense has suggested that the neighbors heard only Pistorius screaming
and not a woman.
In earlier testimony
Tuesday, Pistorius denied three other charges against him relating to
firing a gun in public on two occasions, and illegal possession of
ammunition.
He said he wasn't to blame for a
shot going off in a busy Johannesburg restaurant because a friend handed
him an "unsafe" gun with a bullet in the chamber under the table. He
also said he wasn't guilty of illegally possessing .38-caliber
ammunition in his home because he was safekeeping it for his father and
he had no intention to use it.
Pistorius was
born without fibula bones because of a congenital defect, and his legs
were amputated when he was 11 months old. He ran on carbon-fiber blades
and is a multiple Paralympic medalist. He competed at the London
Olympics but didn't win a medal.
In a dramatic
scene before the packed courtroom Tuesday, Pistorius left briefly at
one point to change out of his dark suit and into a white shirt and
shorts, similar to the clothes he was wearing when he killed Steenkamp.
Prompted
by his lawyer, Pistorius then took off his prosthesis and stood on his
stumps by the bullet-marked toilet door, which has remained in the
courtroom for much of the trial. It appeared to be an effort by the
defense to illustrate what they describe as the Olympian's vulnerability
at the time of the shooting.
