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Oscar Pistorius trial: Witness says she heard 'bloodcurdling screams' followed by four shots as athlete pleads not guilty to murdering Reeva Steenkamp Oscar Pistorius trial: Witness says she heard 'bloodcurdling screams' followed by four shots as athlete pleads not guilty to murdering Reeva Steenkamp
(about 5 hours later)
The first witness called by prosecutors at Oscar Pistorius's trial told court she heard "bloodcurdling screams" from a woman followed by shots the night Reeva Steenkamp was murdered. “Blood curdling screams”, followed by the sound of gunfire, were heard coming from the home of Oscar Pistorius on the night he shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, according to the first witness to testify in the case, which began yesterday at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, South Africa.
Michelle Burger, whose home borders Mr Pistorius's Silver Woods estate, said she and her husband had "gone to bed at nine or 10, and woke at three to the sound of a woman screaming". “The fear in that woman’s voice, you only fear like that if your life is threatened,” said Dr Michell Burger, whose home is next to the boundary of the Silverwoods Estate where Pistorius’s villa is situated.
"She screamed terribly and she yelled for help. Then I also heard a man screaming for help. Three times he yelled for help," she told the court. Dr Burger said she and her husband were awoken by the sound at around three o clock in the morning.
"I heard the screams again. It was worse. It was more intense. She was very scared." “I sat upright in bed and my husband also woke up,” she said. “My husband jumped up and went to the balcony. I was still sitting in the bed and heard her screams. She screamed terribly and yelled for help. And then I also heard a man screaming for help three times, he yelled for help.
Ms Burger also claimed to have heard four gunshots, with a significant pause following the first shot, and then the remaining three in quick succession “When the shots started I heard a woman scream. It was during the shots that I heard her. After the fourth shot, her screams faded away.”
"Just after her screams, I heard four shots. Four gunshots," she said. "Bang ... bang, bang, bang. It was bloodcurdling screams." She said there had been a long pause between the first shot and the subsequent three. “It was bam (pause) bam bam bam.” She added: “I said, ‘I hope that woman did not see her husband being shot in front of her’ because after he called for help we did not hear him again.” After hearing on the news the next day that Pistorius shot his girlfriend thinking she was an intruder, Ms Burger said: “It can’t be because it is not what we heard.”
In a dark suit, black tie and white shirt, the Blade Runner rose only to speak the words "not guilty, my lady" on four separate occasions, and indicated that he will contest the South African state's version of the events that led to her death in the strongest possible terms. The events she claims to have overheard paint a markedly different picture to Oscar Pistorius’s account, a story he indicated he will be sticking to in the strongest possible terms.
In a statement read to the court by Kenny Oldwage, a member of his legal team, Pistorius said  that he and Ms Steenkamp were in a "loving relationship" and "that I would want to shoot or kill Reeva cannot be further from the truth". In a dark suit, black tie and white shirt Oscar Pistorius rose only to speak the words “not guilty, my lady” on four separate occasions, as the state prosecutor read out four separate charges against him. One is that he “intentionally killed” Reeva Steenkamp. The other three are comparatively minor firearms charges - that he discharged a gun through the open sun roof of a car and in a Johannesburg restaurant, and had illegal ammunition at his home - incidents that may be important when the state attempts to portray him as volatile, reckless and obsessed with guns.
Prosecutors claim that Ms Steenkamp was deliberately killed by Pistorius after an argument at his Pretoria home, which he again vehemently denied. In a statement read to the court by Kenny Oldwage, a member of his defence team, Pistorius said that he and Reeva Steenkamp were in a "loving relationship" and "that I would want to shoot or kill Reeva cannot be further from the truth".
If Pistorius's version of events are to be believed - that he mistook Reeva in the bathroom for an intruder - the state will want to know why no identifying sound could have emerged from the door after the first shot was fired. The state claims that Ms Steenkamp was deliberately killed by Pistorius after an argument at his Pretoria home, which he again vehemently denied. “There was no argument. I will deny this in the strongest possible terms,” he said.
On entering the court, Pistorius walked directly past Reeva Steenkamp's mother June, the first time the two had been in the same room together.  
Ms Steenkamp has said she is there to "look Oscar in the eye", but the sprinter afforded her no such opportunity. Oscar's brother Carl, sister Aimee and Uncle Arnold, were just a couple of metres away - the two families almost side by side. Pistorius’s defence counsel Barry Roux was extremely hostile in his questioning of Dr Burger, suggesting the noises she heard were not gunfire, but the sound of Pistorius breaking down the bathroom door with a cricket bat, and the high-pitched screams that sounded like a female voice was in fact a highly anguished Pistorius.
Pistorius's team will seek to further discredit the state's handling of the crime scene, which they claimed detectives left "contaminated, disturbed and tampered with". “Do you believe the man?” Roux asked her. “Or do you believe that Oscar Pistorius lied at the bail application? I have asked you this question five times and you haven’t answered it.”
Questions over Pistorius's character will form a central part of the case as it unfolds in the coming weeks, and Pistorius's team made plain they will fight hard to prevent such evidence being admitted. He also took her to task for what he felt were discrepancies between the statement she had given police and the claims she made in court. There is no mentions of “blood-curdling screams and rising levels of anxiety” in her police statement, merely that she “heard a scream.”
"The only purpose of admitting character evidence would be an attempt to engineer an assassination of my character," "During the course of the trial my lawyers will object to the admittance of such character evidence." But Dr Burger stuck rigidly to her story, that the was “100 per cent sure” that the sound she heard was gunfire. “I know what gunshot sounds like,” she said.
Pistorius was forced to wait in the dock for more almost two hours before Case CC 113/13 began late. An Afrikaans interpreter required for a witness who wished to testify in the language had reportedly only been told that morning what morning what case they would be working on, and was reported to have been 'overwhelmed.' Questions over Pistorius’s character will form a central part of the case as it unfolds in the coming weeks, and Pistorius’s team made plain they will fight hard to prevent such evidence being admitted.
Pistorius maintains the killing of his girlfriend, the model Reeva Steenkamp, was a case of mistaken identity, that she had gone to the bathroom while he brought a fan in from the balcony, and that he believed an intruder was hiding in the locked toilet cubicle, while she was sleeping in his bed. “The only purpose of admitting character evidence would be an attempt to engineer an assassination of my character,” his statement said. “During the course of the trial my lawyers will object to the admittance of such character evidence.
The state prosecutor Gerrie Nel is expected to ask him how he managed to gather his gun from the side of the bed without realising Steenkamp wasn't in it, and how he could have called out to Reeva to phone the police, and fired not one but four shots through the door without managing to establish it was Ms Steenkamp behind it. Prosecutors are still hopeful of gaining access to messages on Pistorius’s iPhone, which they hope will shed light on what may have happened in the final hours before Ms Steenkamp’s death. They are currently trying to secure a US court order to instruct Apple to unlock the phone, as the password provided by Pistorius’s legal team has not worked. They admit it is a “fishing expedition”, but they hope that messages contained on the phone may reveal the cause of arguments reportedly overheard in Pistorius’s home in the hours before the shooting happened.
Pistorius's defence led by the charismatic barrister Barry Roux, will seek to paint a picture of a man with an extreme fear of crime and intruders, fuelled by his disability and the sense of vulnerability if inflicted on him. If convicted of murder he will almost certainly receive a life sentence, with a minimum term of 25 years. If he is found not guilty on the murder charge, he will likely face a charge of ‘culpable homicide’ - South Africa’s equivalent of manslaughter, for which the sentence could range from a suspended, non-custodial sentence, to 15 years in jail.
Certain incidents which took on a sinister tone in the days after the killing, such as having tweeted in late 2012 about having gone into "full attack recon mode in the pantry" after having mistaken the sound of a dishwasher for an intruder, will, in fact, assist Pistorius's cause.
Pistorius's lawyers concede that when Ms Steenkamp was shot she was wearing clothing that was unlikely to have been worn in bed.
But it is now believed that ballistics evidence show that Pistorius was on his stumps when he shot through the bathroom door, not wearing his prosthetics as the prosecution had earlier claimed.
If convicted of murder he is expected to receive a life sentence, with a minimum term of 25 years. If he is found not guilty on the murder charge, he will likely face a charge of "culpable homicide" - South Africa's equivalent of manslaughter, for which the sentence could range from a suspended, non-custodial sentence, to 15 years in jail.