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Pistorius Describes ‘the Moment Everything Changed’ Tearful Drama as Pistorius Says He Panicked
(about 5 hours later)
PRETORIA, South Africa — In electrifying testimony at his murder trial here, the Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius on Tuesday offered in vivid detail his version of what happened the night he shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, saying he mistook her for an intruder. PRETORIA, South Africa — It was bold, splashy and theatrical, the kind of flourish more often seen in courtroom dramas than in real-life murder trials. In the middle of his emotional and harrowing testimony on Tuesday, the champion sprinter Oscar Pistorius stood up in full view of the packed courtroom, removed his prosthetic legs and demonstrated in a few ungainly steps how very vulnerable and exposed he can be with only his stumps to depend on.
The two had enjoyed a cozy evening together and fallen asleep in bed, he said, until it all went wrong. The moment came on a grueling day in which a shaky, tearful Mr. Pistorius for the first time gave a full account of what he says happened the night he shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. And it went toward bolstering the case the defense is trying to make: that Mr. Pistorius, the world’s most celebrated disabled athlete, is at the same time an anxious and physically fragile man who sprayed bullets through the door of his bathroom in a panic because he believed someone had broken into his house.
“My lady, that’s the moment that everything changed,” he told the judge, speaking of the instant he heard noises in the middle of the night. “I thought that a burglar had entered my home. Initially I froze. I didn’t know what to do. The first thing that ran through my mind is that I needed to protect myself,” he said, “that I needed to protect Reeva and I.” “I was overcome with fear,” he said of the moment he says he heard noises coming from outside his bedroom early on Feb. 14, 2013. “I started screaming and shouting for the burglars to get out of my house. I shouted for Reeva to get on the floor. I shouted for her to phone the police.”
Mr. Pistorius, 27, the world’s most celebrated disabled athlete, is accused of premeditated murder in the death of Ms. Steenkamp, 29, whom he shot four times through the locked door of the bathroom at his home. The prosecution, which rested its case late last month, has sought to present him as an angry, jealous gun zealot who killed his girlfriend in a fit of rage. The trial has dominated the news here in South Africa. Born without fibulae, bones that connect the knee to the ankle, Mr. Pistorius lost his lower legs to amputation when he was a baby, but with his talent, perseverance and charm went on to become a bona fide South African hero. An inspirational sprinter who scooped up medals in able-bodied as well as disabled competitions, he carried the flag for South Africa at the closing ceremony in the 2012 Olympics in London.
The defense, which began presenting its case this week, is seeking to show that Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp’s relationship was loving and supportive and that what happened in the early hours of Feb. 14, 2013, was a horrible tragedy. In addition to the attention surrounding a trial involving a high-profile star athlete, the case has raised other issues: about South Africa’s gun culture; about the country’s laws covering self-defense and its no-jury trial system; about the fear of violent crime that many people here say they always carry with them; and about how women are treated by handsome and seemingly entitled celebrities like Mr. Pistorius. The trial, which began nearly a month ago and is expected to last into May, is receiving gavel-to-gavel coverage, with its own dedicated cable channel and all-day radio program.
Though he has given his version of events in written submissions to the court, Tuesday was the first time Mr. Pistorius, who has been distraught through much of the trial, presented his account on the stand. By Mr. Pistorius’s account, Feb. 13, 2013, had been a routine evening in his fledgling romance with Ms. Steenkamp, 29, a law graduate and model he had met several months earlier and with whom he said he was “besotted.” The two had eaten dinner together at Mr. Pistorius’s house in a gated Pretoria development and then gone upstairs to his bedroom. There they whiled away the evening texting, surfing the Internet, watching television and chatting before eventually falling asleep.
In his narrative, he grabbed his gun from under the bed and — walking precariously on his stumps because he had removed his prosthetic legs before going to bed — made his way toward the bathroom, screaming all the while. In earlier testimony, Mr. Pistorius, 27, read through an almost numbing litany of text messages he had exchanged with Ms. Steenkamp, replete with endearments and emoticons. That was part of the defense’s effort to establish that contrary to the prosecution’s account, the pair had a loving and supportive relationship, one that had weathered earlier disagreements and had reached the point where they could relax happily together at his house.
“It was at this point I was overcome with fear,” he said, his voice quavering. Several times, the judge asked him to speak louder because she was having trouble hearing him. He said he was worried that the intruder or intruders could have lunged at him at any moment, as he was not wearing his prosthetic legs. The night was hot and muggy, Mr. Pistorius testified, and his air-conditioning was not working. He woke up in the middle of the night, spoke to Ms. Steenkamp, who he said was also awake, and then — without turning on the lights or putting on his prosthetic legs — went to the balcony next to his bedroom to move the electric fans he had set up there, he said.
“I started screaming and shouting for the burglars to get out of my house,” he said. “I shouted for Reeva to get on the floor. I shouted for her to phone the police.” Then, he says, he heard a noise, and the mundane turned to the horrifying.
Mr. Pistorius described how he “scuffled” toward the bathroom, fearful that an intruder was in the bathroom. “Before I knew it, I fired four shots at the door,” he said, choking back sobs. “My ears were ringing.” He said it had not occurred to him at that point that Ms. Steenkamp could have been in the bathroom. He said that he went to search for her in the bedroom and could not find her. “My lady, that’s the moment that everything changed,” he told Judge Thokozile Masipa, his voice faltering and fading in and out of audibility. “I thought that a burglar had entered my home. Initially I froze. I didn’t know what to do. The first thing that ran through my mind is that I needed to protect myself,” he said, “that I needed to protect Reeva and I.”
“I didn’t want to believe it could be Reeva in toilet,” he said. “I was crying out for Reeva. I was screaming.” Mr. Pistorius is accused of murdering Ms. Steenkamp by shooting her four times in a fit of violent rage as the two argued late into the night. If convicted of the most serious of the charges against him, he faces at least 25 years in prison.
When he broke open the door and saw Reeva, he said, he burst into tears. He contends that there was no argument at all, that it was a tragic mistake, that he grabbed his gun from under the bed and went down the hall in search of the intruders. By his account, he believed that Ms. Steenkamp had remained in bed, in their dark bedroom, because he had spoken to her before getting up and that she failed to respond to his screams because she feared for her own safety from intruders.
As Mr. Pistorius recalled the moment, he sobbed uncontrollably. The judge adjourned the trial until Wednesday. But it was tough going. Even under the mildest of questioning by his own defense lawyer, Barry Roux, Mr. Pistorius stuttered, paused, cried, lowered his voice to a whisper and at times could barely maintain his composure. And when he got to the crucial part of his story — the part where he fired through the bathroom door, believing himself in danger, only to discover Ms. Steenkamp’s blood-spattered body inside a few moments later — he began weeping.
In earlier testimony, Mr. Pistorius said he had believed Ms. Steenkamp was still in bed, having spoken to her before he got up to move some fans that were positioned outside the bedroom. The fans were on, he said, because his air-conditioning system was broken. “I was just panicked at this point,” he said, describing how he had taken the cricket bat he kept in his bedroom and used it to batter down the locked door. “I don’t think I’ve ever cried like that or screamed like that. I was crying out for the Lord to help me. I was crying out for Reeva.”
In a dramatic moment, after the defense asked for a brief recess, Mr. Pistorius re-entered the courtroom dressed in clothes similar to those he had been wearing the night of the killing — shorts and a T-shirt. He stood up to show how tall he is when wearing his prosthetic legs and then, in full view of the packed courtroom, removed those legs and walked a few yards on his stumps, considerably shorter and more vulnerable than he is when people see him in public. After bashing the door open, he said, he sat over Ms. Steenkamp’s body. “I sat over Reeva and I cried,” he said — for how long, he cannot remember. “She wasn’t breathing.”
That was intended to shed additional light on Mr. Pistorius’s testimony about his state of mind the night Ms. Steenkamp died. As was his habit, he said, he had removed his prosthetic legs before going to bed, locked his bedroom door and propped a cricket bat nearby to keep intruders out because the lock was not a strong one. There was an alarm system in the house, he said, but it was not working well. At that point in his testimony he broke down completely, and could not go on.
Mr. Pistorius said that the day before Ms. Steenkamp’s death had been a routine one in the couple’s relationship, that they had eaten dinner together and that he had helped her review a management contract. He planned to give her a bracelet the next day, Valentine’s Day, he said. The court took a hasty break, and Mr. Pistorius’s brother, sister and aunt gathered around the witness stand to comfort him. But his gasping sobs continued to reverberate through the quiet and shocked courtroom. The court was forced to adjourn early.
Breaking into tears, Mr. Pistorius related how he had come home that afternoon to find a Valentine’s gift from Ms. Steenkamp wrapped on the table. She told him not to open it until the next day, but he only unwrapped it months later. Mr. Pistorius has not yet finished his testimony. But his lack of composure on Tuesday does not augur well for how he will stand up under cross-examination by the prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, who is known for his aggressive, unforgiving questioning and his ability to break down witnesses.
The present, he said, was a picture frame with four photographs of the couple in it. “If he’s genuinely emotional, when he gets put under pressure he’ll be worse than he is now, and Nel will carve him up into little pieces,” said Martin Hood, a defense lawyer here. “If he is destroyed, his story is destroyed, and he’ll get convicted. But if his demeanor changes when he’s cross-examined and he becomes a stronger witness, then his credibility is also questioned.”
The testimony came at the end of a morning in which the defense sought to portray Mr. Pistorius as a supportive and attentive boyfriend, whose quarrels with Ms. Steenkamp ended with apologies and reconciliation. Mr. Pistorius read messages that were peppered with smiley faces, kisses and pet names. “I’m crazy about you,” he wrote in one message. Mr. Hood said that Mr. Pistorius’s emotional unpredictably made him a tricky bet as a defense client, since lawyers need to know how clients will respond to questioning. And he said that until it is subject to rigorous scrutiny through cross-examination, Mr. Pistorius’s story remains just that: a story.
Mr. Pistorius said that he had been “besotted” with Ms. Steenkamp from their first dates, that the relationship grew as he advised her on her career, and that they shared common interests, including sports cars. “I was very keen on Reeva. I think I was maybe more into her than she was at times with me,” he said. “Cross-examination is the single most important tool in getting to the truth of the situation,” Mr. Hood said. “It’s very easy to say it happened this way, but if you don’t test it, you’ll never know the truth.”
He began his testimony on Monday with an apology to Ms. Steenkamp’s family, who sat stone-faced in the courtroom. Clearly shaken, he spoke so softly that he was nearly inaudible at times.
“There hasn’t been a moment since this tragedy happened that I haven’t thought about your family,” Mr. Pistorius said, his voice quavering. Pausing as he tried to keep his composure, he went on, “I can’t imagine the pain and the sorrow and the loss I caused your family.”
Earlier, he tried to offer to the Steenkamps a rationale, of sorts, for his actions.
“I was simply trying to protect Reeva,” he said. “I can promise that when she went to bed that night she felt loved.”
Mr. Pistorius faces 25 years in prison if convicted of the most serious of the charges he faces: premeditated murder.
Mr. Pistorius is considered a national hero in South Africa for his speed and grace competing against able-bodied athletes as well as other Paralympians. He and Ms. Steenkamp were fixtures in Johannesburg’s celebrity scene, and Mr. Pistorius spoke on Monday of his love for her.
“I was taken aback, bowled over by how much I felt for her,” he said, so much so that he decided early in 2013 to move to Johannesburg to be closer to her. Eager to sell his house in Pretoria, he hired a contractor to spruce it up and make repairs. The work included fixing a broken window that, on the night Ms. Steenkamp died, had a ladder propped outside it, in preparation for the workmen’s arrival. The defense hopes that fact, too, will help present a plausible case that Mr. Pistorius believed someone had broken into his house.
The prosecution has sought to present Mr. Pistorius as irascible, possessive and trigger-happy. But on Monday he just looked shattered, overwhelmed and contrite.
After several hours of questioning, Mr. Pistorius said he had not slept on Sunday night, his mind racing and full of worry. “I’m just really tired at the moment,” he said. “The weight of this is extremely overbearing.”