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| Olympian Oscar Pistorius, foreground, stands following his bail hearing, as his brother Carl, left, and father Henke, second from left, look on in Pretoria, South Africa, Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013. Pistorius fired into the door of a small bathroom where his girlfriend was cowering after a shouting match on Valentine's Day, hitting her three times, a South African prosecutor said Tuesday as he charged the sports icon with premeditated murder. The magistrate ruled that Pistorius faces the harshest bail requirements available in South African law. He did not elaborate before a break was called in the session. |
PRETORIA, South
Africa (AP) -- Oscar Pistorius portrayed himself as a lover caught
in tragedy, wielding a pistol and frightened as he stood only on his
stumps, then killed his girlfriend after mistaking her for an intruder
on Valentine's Day.
Prosecutors, however, said
the double-amputee Olympian committed premeditated murder, planning the
slaying, then firing at Reeva Steenkamp as she cowered behind his
locked bathroom door with no hope of escape.
"She couldn't go anywhere," Prosecutor Gerrie Nel told a packed courtroom Tuesday. "It must have been horrific."
Weeping
uncontrollably, Pistorius listened as his words were read out in court
by his attorney during the opening of a two-day bail hearing, his first
public account of the events surrounding the shooting death of
Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model and reality TV star who had spoken out
against violence against women.
"I fail to
understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated
murder, as I had no intention to kill my girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp,"
Pistorius said in the sworn affidavit. "I deny the aforesaid allegation
in the strongest terms."
It was the first time
that the prosecution and Pistorius provided details of their radically
divergent accounts of the killing, which has shocked South Africans and
fans worldwide, who idolized the 26-year-old track star known as the
Blade Runner for overcoming his disability to compete in last summer's
London Olympics.
Nel said Pistorius committed
premeditated murder when he rose from his bed after a fight with
Steenkamp, pulled on his prosthetic legs and walked about 20 feet from
his bedroom to the locked toilet door and pumped it with four bullets,
three of which hit the model.
That
contradicted the runner's statement, read aloud by defense attorney
Barry Roux, who described how the couple spent a quiet night together in
the athlete's upscale home in a gated community in the capital of
Pretoria, then went to sleep around 10 p.m.
Sometime
before dawn, Pistorius said he awoke, and walking only on his stumps,
pulled a fan in from an open balcony and closed it. That's when he said
he heard a noise and became alarmed because the bathroom window, which
had no security bars, was open and workers had left ladders nearby.
"It filled me with horror and fear," Pistorius said in the statement.
"I
am acutely aware of violent crime being committed by intruders entering
homes," he said. "I have received death threats before. I have also
been a victim of violence and of burglaries before. For that reason I
kept my firearm, a 9 mm Parabellum, underneath my bed when I went to bed
at night."
Too frightened to turn on a light,
Pistorius said, he pulled out his pistol and headed for the bathroom,
believing Steenkamp was still asleep "in the pitch dark" of the bedroom.
"As
I did not have my prosthetic legs on and felt extremely vulnerable, I
knew I had to protect Reeva and myself," he said, adding that he shouted
to Steenkamp to call the police as he fired at the closed toilet door.
It was then, Pistorius said, that he realized Steenkamp was not in bed.
He
said he pulled on his prosthetic legs and tried to kick down the toilet
door before finally giving up and bashing it in with a cricket bat.
Inside, he said he found Steenkamp, slumped over but still alive. He
said he lifted her bloodied body and carried her downstairs to seek
medical help.
But it was too late. "She died in my arms," Pistorius said.
"We
were deeply in love and I could not be happier," the athlete said. "I
know she felt the same way. She had given me a present for Valentine's
Day but asked me only to open it the next day."
Pistorius
broke down in sobs repeatedly as his account was read, prompting Chief
Magistrate Desmond Nair to call a recess at one point.
"Maintain your composure," the magistrate said. "You need to apply your mind here."
"Yes, my lordship," Pistorius replied, his voice quivering.
Nair
adjourned the case until Wednesday without ruling on whether Pistorius
would be granted bail. However, he said the gravity of the charge -
which carries a mandatory life sentence - meant the athlete's lawyers
must offer "exceptional" reasons for bail to be granted, making his
release unlikely.
Roux, the defense attorney,
said there was no evidence to substantiate a murder charge. "We submit
it is not even murder. There is no concession this is a murder," he
said.
The prosecutor disagreed.
"It
is our respectful argument that `pre-planning' or premeditation do not
require months of planning," Nel said. "If ... I ready myself and walk a
distance with the intention to kill someone, it is premeditated."
Hundreds
of miles from the Magistrate's Court, a memorial service was held for
Steenkamp in the south coast city of Port Elizabeth. Six pallbearers
carried her coffin, draped with a white cloth and covered in white
flowers, into the church for the private service and cremation.
Relatives
recalled how the model with a law degree had campaigned against
domestic violence and had planned to don black for a "Black Friday"
protest in honor of a 17-year-old girl who was recently gang-raped and
mutilated.
What "she stood for, and the abuse
against women, unfortunately it's gone right around, and I think the
Lord knows that statement is more powerful now," said her uncle, Mike
Steenkamp.
South Africa has some of the
world's worst rates of violence against women and the highest rate in
the world of women killed by an intimate partner, according to a study
by the Medical Research Council, which said at least three women are
killed by a partner every day in the country of 50 million.
Since
the shooting, several of Pistorius' sponsors have dropped him. On
Tuesday, Clarins Group, which owns Thierry Mugler Perfumes, said it
would withdraw all advertising featuring the Olympian. A cologne line
with the company, called A(asterisk)Men, bears his image.
