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Without wanting to be all Nancy Drew, amateur sleuth... What really puzzles me is that, according to his account, he heard a noise in the bathroom and went to get his gun from under the bed. Why wouldn't he tell his girlfriend (who he supposedly believed was still in bed) to ring the police at that point?

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Who knows. I guess if you know you're about to kill the intruder, calling the cops can wait a few minutes....

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Oh and Bernie, National flags should be raised not flipped. Sort it!

Yeah but he says that he shouted for her to call the police after he went into the bathroom. Why not tell her when she's right there?

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I don't know. If we assume his story is true, he would have fetched the gun in a serious panic. Defending himself with the gun is initially far more important than calling the police. I can only assume that once he felt he had the intruder cornered / shot, he then was able to think about the next thing which was to call the police.

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Oh and Bernie, National flags should be raised not flipped. Sort it!

Or he's just making it up as he goes along... Whatever.

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Of course. I'm just playing devils advocate which is what you have to do when analysing a case from a neutrals position.

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Oh and Bernie, National flags should be raised not flipped. Sort it!

Which raises more questions. If you are unable to subdue someone without lethal force due to your disability, surely that's even weirder that you'd go in gung ho, and just hope you killed whoever is behind the door you are casually firing off shots at? Are you not worried that you'd miss and they would then attack you?
Unless you are specifically trying to kill your attacker, which then makes his argument about not knowing who he was firing at a moot point, because he's still trying to actively wound someone.

It all just sounds like some cobbled together nonsense to induce a bit of doubt in the jury. Especially when you consider by his version of events, the normal course of action is not to check his girlfriend is ok (or even where she is), but to go and find his gun.

I know the conflicting reports were from the media. I was pointing out that it we don't know what version of events is true at this stage so making any conclusive judgements as to the viability of his story is difficult.

Agreed on the fact that saying "I didn't know who it was" would be an admission that he intended to harm a person, but we don't know that that's the only thing he said to police in any sort of statement. In all probability that will only be one part of what he said in his version of events. That just seems to be the 'tag line' that has been grabbed by the media. The same would go for what is being reported about his statement re: not intending to kill her rather than harm her. I never find the media more frustrating than when it involves evidence related to a court matter: wording, context and detail are so important and we never get that accurately.

I also thought that I indicated in my post that the burden of proof for any defence strategy will rest with the defence. They'd have to put forth the evidence related to his state of mind at the time and, as I said, IMO if the theory that is being reported is the one they are going with then that will become crucial.

As for the voluntary manslaughter point you raise, that was what I was getting at with my comments about their choice of charge and how that could backfire. It's not a given that if they don't prove premeditated murder he can be found guilty of a lesser charge. I don't know the South African system on that one, but I know cases in Australia, the US and the UK have all been botched due to the prosecution going with a more serious charge than they can prove.

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i find it odd that he didn't have time to call the police, but had the time to strap his legs on, get a gun and fire blindly through a bathroom door. If you were panicking because of intruder, or if you didn't have legs, you'd probably keep the gun within easy reach and wouldn't be fumbling around try to strap on a pair of legs if you thought your life was in danger. Plus the fact, being an olympic athlete, maybe running away would have been a more appropriate action if an intruder was in the bathroom (that's what I'd do!).

The only way it that an accident would make sense is if he was asleep in bed, and his girlfriend came round during the night without forewarning, let herself in, then went into the bathroom. If OP was paranoid about intruders because of death threats etc, maybe he would have reacted in such a way. Nothing else makes sense to me at this minute, unless it was pure cold-blooded murder.

My understanding of what is being reported is that he says he didn't put on the prosthetics before firing the shots.

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This means the next Nike athelete is gonna nuke a small country, doesn't it?

Which according to Andrew Harding, is what Hilton Botha, the lead detective on the case admitted to in terms of the forensic evidence supporting it during cross examination.
It's just becoming bizarre now. The defence story is weird, but the prosecution is falling apart at a bail hearing. Very interesting to see all the evidence when it actually goes to trial.

Yes, from what I've been reading Botha was decimated on the stand by Barry Roux, the defence lawyer, who called into question the investigation and gathering of evidence by police. Wouldn't be the first time the prosecution case fell apart due to issues with the investigation. I'll be fascinated not just to see the evidence at further hearings, but how it is handled by Roux.

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And it just gets weirder and weirder. Apparently the lead detective, Botha, is facing attempted murder charges himself. http://news.brisbanetimes.com.au/breaki ... 2etyf.html

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This whole case just stinks right now... Prosecution trying to build a case for pre-meditated murder that falls apart the instant the defence get a chance to cross-examine. And this is only a bail hearing...

Personally, I don't agree with the prosecution stance of pre-meditated murder. They base that on "he put on his legs", but to me it would have been more pre-meditated if he had killed her in bed...

At most I think it could have been murder due to emotional distress. If they had been arguing (which I believe has been refuted based on the fact the witnesses who the prosecution have were actually too far away to hear anything clearly enough) it might have been a case that he shot her due to being emotionally compromised.

At least I think it could be the accident he claimed.

I do wonder whether it was an accident because it's a very strange thing to happen at between 04.00-05.00 in the morning. I know whenever I get up in the middle of the night I'm not thinking properly as I'm still half asleep.

It could be that she got up in the night to go to the toilet. Her movement disturbed Oscar who got up to check the noise not realising that she wasn't in bed. Went out to the balcony and saw the bathroom window open. Panicked and chose to defend his home and his girlfriend without thinking things through and checking she was in bed to defend.


Certainly at the very least you have to consider that this is yet another case for gun controls.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of mugging and burglary. Many residents possess firearms for self defence.

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Last week the BBC had some stats up (not sure of their source though). 8,300 gun related violent crime in SA, which was only 47.5% of total violent crime in the country.

Last week the BBC had some stats up (not sure of their source though). 8,300 gun related violent crime in SA, which was only 47.5% of total violent crime in the country.

Pistorius granted bail according to BBC live feed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21544275

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Not really that surprising. Lead detective pulled off the case due to the strength of his testimony. Says a lot about how circumstantial their case is.

Here is a link from CNN. OJ is included. And there are also 2 athletes #2 and #6 involving alimony. 3 of them were aquitted (Sorry for counting OJ. But he has to serve 33 years for robbery and kidnapping. He has 28 years left)

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/20/worldspor ... ?hpt=hp_t2

OJ Simpson got off that murder charge on a technicality. There was some doubt over a B sample test, even though both DNA tests showed the same result, and matched Simpson's DNA profile to a degree that there was only a 1 in 100 million chance it could be someone else. Which technically meant it could be 1 of 3 people in the USA in and of itself, but the defence went after that and it wasn't used as evidence in the end. No one ever presented one of those 2 other people with the same DNA profile though. Had he been tried in a competent legal system like the UK, he'd have been put away for life.

From BBC. I cannot agree more with this opinion:



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21558901

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To many things not adding up here , given the nature of violent burglaries in SA surely any man with an ounce of decency would attempt to ensure his Girlfriends safety by at least waking her up so she can clothe herself , hide or arm herself or get help.

If her getting out of bed to use the bathroom didn't wake him up what did ?
Fractures to her skull bloodied cricket bat four shots and no sound from her .

Unfortunately the police thinking what happened was obvious did not do their job properly and like many criminals before him he may get off on a technicality due to incompetence .

It appears his brother is also up on charge for culpable homicide of a female motorist .

Two young men out of control

I see this as 2 separate issues. Did he intend to kill his girl, questionable, fair dues, should wait for the trial result.

Second part. He shot someone through a locked door 4 times. He should be locked up.

Had it been he who was in the locked toilet, possibly he had grounds to fear who was outside. He was not, he was not trapped or defenseless, he was outside a locked door with a gun. He was able to defend himself with the gun as he phoned the police, or at a minimum called through the door to ask who was there.

To indiscriminately fire 4 shots through a locked door when he was not being threatened deserves prison in its self.

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but when you sleep in the same bed as your partner and you hear noises.. the very FIRST thing you do is check your partner is ok and wake them up quietly.. the idea that this would escape your mind and that you'd shoot blindly through your own bathroom door without even taking a glance at your bed, is absurd. Personally in that situation, I'd most likely have taken the chance to flee, rather than to grab a gun and shoot without ever seeing the target. Does anyone know if the bathroom door was locked or just shut?
It's also a bit odd that the first two people on the scene were his brother and his lawyer. Surely most people are programmed to call the police?!
Doesn't stack up for me.. mightily strange.

Apparently the toilet was a separate room within the bathroom & had it's own door. In his statement to the court, that I read, he said that the toilet door was locked & he had to break it down to get in. Something interesting, I have a colleague that doesn't watch the news or read newspapers so, when I showed her his court statement in my newspaper, she had not heard about any of this previously nor had any preconceptions about it but picked a lot of holes in his statement. She ended up saying that his explanation could be plausible but that there were a lot of areas that she found confusing & almost contradictory. Some of them being:

From my understanding the police have admitted that the cricket bat was not used to cause any injuries to her.

The police do appear to have done a dodgy job in collecting the evidence, but rather than that allow Pistorius to get off due to incompetence, perhaps the point is that he shouldn't have been charged with what he was in the first place. You're assuming that he's guilty and not going to be convicted of that, but it's just as reasonable to say that he may have been innocent of premeditated murder and that charge misrepresented the situation.

Why would anyone trust the police in their judgement of the situation? The lead detective is up on 7 attempted murder charges, they presented conflicting evidence to the court and they had not managed the crime scene and evidence properly. It's possible they trumped up charges because they liked the idea of catching a big fish.

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Both Pistorius and the police have confirmed that the toilet door was locked. The police are saying that indicates that Steenkamp was hiding from Pistorius.

The problem I have with people making judgements about Pistorius's actions is that unless you are a double amputee who was without your prosthetics, live in a high violent crime area where a lot of people have guns, have been threatened in the past and reside in a country with high cultural tensions, I don't think you can possibly understand how Pistorius felt in the moment he thought there was an intruder. There's a very high level of vulnerability going on.

The other thing is that while it's all very well to question how he handled things on an academic level from the safety and comfort of your undisturbed home or workplace that doesn't account for the matter of panic. When a person panics they don't necessarily act sensibly or rationally and the brain can't problem solve. How many times have we heard about kitchen oil fires where a person has thrown water on it and made it worse? Everyone who reads that says, "oh they should have thrown a blanket on it" but in a state of panic it's understandable that the only thought a brain has is its instinctive one, which says to throw water. People working in Iraq in private enterprise back in the mid 2000s (I am not sure if it is still the case) were given training about what to do in the case of a kidnapping. This was not so that they could halt the kidnapping but to help reduce the likelihood of them panicking and doing something stupid and so that information on how to conduct themselves was at their fingertips so they wouldn't have to problem solve in the moment, again reducing the likelihood of them doing something stupid.

If Pistorius was paranoid about his safety then it strikes me as very plausible that his brain was wired to act aggressively if something happened and that's why his first instinct was to go after the person and shoot. He may well have subconsciously trained his brain to see that as the first course of action. That he was like that is a problem and doesn't discount the recklessness of what he did. However it changes the level of culpability and raises questions about the circumstantial and environmental issues that should be addressed such as gun control and the volatile nature of some countries.

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A locked toilet door for me would mean that a person is using the loo! If I had to go so badly, I wouldn't shoot it!!!

I agree with Kai generally, but on the other hand I can't stop thinking that this is just on Pistorius account. We don't really know how he acted. We do know that he was comfortable with guns and I almost can't believe that he would be the person that panics and shoots blindly. He wasn't immediately threatened in my opinion, if you hear a noise and don't see anyone in your immediate vicinity then you have no reason to start shooting. To me the whole "shoot first and ask questions later" thing is a bit irresponsible.

Now this doesn't mean that I dismiss him panicking and being dazed and confused after waking up at that late hour. But a gun is a major responsibility, to use it you have to make sure that it is for the right reasons. We are all hardwired to seek protection when threatened, but we also know that "call the police" is the nr 1 thing to do (especially when not immediately threatened), always. My 5 year old nephew knows this...

I seriously want this to be some kind of an accident. It is such a shame

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If OP is telling the truth then as a bare minimum he is guilty by his own admission of manslaughter (or its equivalent in SA )

I hate to say it but I'm already getting a sense of OJ Simpson all over again. I honestly belive OJ murdered his woman. I also believe the court was right to free him. The police screwed up the investigation in a lot of ways. I'm all for convicting murders and throwing them in prison for lengthy periods of time but I think that due process of law has to be followed and without it there can't be a fair conviction.

what has two legs and murders women?

the Pistorius brothers

The floor plans of his apartment make his version seem even more unlikely as the balcony is behind his bedroom and bed he has to walk past bed get his gun from near his bed in his alledged state of fright walk down hallway turn right into bathroom and then shoot through a locked toilet door four times before realising his girlfriend is not in the bed . It just doesn't add up to me if the floor plan is correct . Add to it this level of fear does not add up to leaving your balcony door open whilst asleep !!

The premeditated would be if the police felt she had gone to the toilet and locked herself in, in fear of him and he got his gun and shot through the door four times with clear intent to kill .

One thing is evident though he meant to kill whoever it was he thought was locked in the bathroom .