Pistorius’s family claim that police testimony is flawed

Oscar Pistorius’s family says it is “extremely concerned” about police testimony at yesterday’s court hearing as it emerged the investigating officer made an error in his court testimony when he identified a substance found in the athlete’s bedroom as testosterone, the national prosecutor said.

In a statement, the Pistorius family said: “The investigating officer Hilton Botha confirmed during cross-examination that the known ballistic and forensic evidence found on the scene where Reeva Steenkamp sadly lost her life was consistent with Oscar’s version of events that the incident was a tragic accident. They trust that everyone has more clarity on this very tragic event.

“The Pistorius family finds the contradictions in Botha’s testimony extremely concerning.”

Earlier, Medupe Simasiku, the spokesman for South Africa’s National Prosecution Agency, said it was too early to identify the substance as it was still undergoing laboratory tests.

“It is not certain (what it is) until the forensics,” Simasiku said, adding that it wasn’t certain if it was “a legal or an illegal medication for now”.

Detective warrant officer Hilton Botha, the investigating officer, said earlier in court during Pistorius’s bail hearing that police found two boxes of testosterone and needles in the bedroom of the Olympic athlete, who is charged with premeditated murder in the Feb 14 shooting death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

It was a mistake to identify the substance now, Simasiku said, as it was still unknown. He said the discovery of needles was in Botha’s statement, however.

Pistorius denies murder, saying in an affidavit that the Valentine’s Day shooting was accidental because he thought there was an intruder in his house.

In response to Botha’s claim, the defence said yesterday, the second day of Pistorius’s bail hearing at Pretoria Magistrate’s Court, that the substance found was not a steroid or a banned substance but a herbal remedy.

Earlier, police told the court witnesses heard arguing, a woman screaming and gunfire at the house of “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius the night he shot dead his model girlfriend.

Police also said Pistorius had previously been arrested at his Pretoria home for assault, although he was not charged, and faced further charges of possessing an unlicensed gun.

A woman who lives in the same highly secured complex as Pistorius “heard talking that sounded like non-stop fighting from two to three in the morning,” hours before Ms Steenkamp was killed, Prosecutor Gerrie Nel said. Another witness reported hearing gunshots, screams and then more shots, police said.

“We have the statement of a person who said after he heard gunshots, he went to his balcony and saw the light was on. Then he heard a female screaming two to three times, then more gunshots,” Detective Hilton Botha said.

But Pistorius’s legal team disputed these accounts as police said the witnesses were at least 300 metres away from the house.

And the prosecution, which wants to prove that the Paralympian had deliberately planned to kill Ms Steenkamp, was forced to admit that Pistorius’s claim that he mistook her for an intruder matched the crime scene.

“It sounds consistent,” Botha said.

Ms Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model, was shot three times through the bathroom door early on Feb 14, with wounds to her head, elbow and hip.

She was declared to have died later by medics who found her covered in bloodied towels and wearing white shorts and a black vest.

Botha was forced to admit police had missed a bullet that hit the toilet basin in their investigation and which the defence’s forensic team discovered four days later. He also conceded he did not wear protective clothing in his inspection, which may have contaminated the scene.

Pistorius, the first double amputee to compete against able-bodied athletes in the Olympics in London last year, says he shot Ms Steenkamp by mistake through a locked bathroom door, believing she was a burglar.

“I had no intention to kill my girlfriend,” he said in an affidavit read to the court on the first day of his bail hearing on Monday.

The 26-year-old said he kept a firearm under his bed at night because he had been a victim of violence and burglaries before and had received death threats.

But the state prosecutor said the athlete would face an additional charge of possessing unlicensed .38 special calibre ammunition.

A police search of his home also found testosterone and needles in a dresser in his bedroom, Botha said.

Defence lawyer Barry Roux, however, said the sex hormone was an acceptable supplement. “It’s a herbal remedy and he can use it and he has used it before,” he said.

Magistrate Desmond Nair said earlier he could not rule out that there was some planning involved in the killing, which may be considered as a premeditated murder, setting a high bar for bail.

The bail hearing was adjourned until this morning.

Pistorius’s defence team and family looked confident at the end of yesterday’s session while the prosecution’s lawyers held worried discussions.

Testimony by Botha of the South African Police Service left prosecutors rubbing their temples, only able to look down at their notes as he misjudged distances and acknowledged a forensics team left in the toilet bowl one of the bullet slugs fired at Ms Steenkamp. However, Botha still poked holes in Pistorius’s own account that he feared for his life and opened fire after mistaking his girlfriend foran intruder.

The prosecution attempted to cement its argument that the couple had a shouting match, that Ms Steenkamp fled and locked herself into the toilet stall of the bathroom and that Pistorius fired four shots through the door, hitting her with three bullets.

Botha said: “I believe that he knew that Reeva was in the bathroom and he shot four shots through the door.”

But asked if the police found anything inconsistent with the version of events presented by Pistorius, Botha responded that they had not. He later said nothing contradicted the police’s version either.

The defence projected a plan of the bedroom and bathroom in the courtroom and argued that Pistorius had to walk past his bed to get to the bathroom and could not have done so without realising that Ms Steenkamp was not in the bed.

“There’s no other way of getting there,” Nel said.

Botha said the trajectory of the bullets showed the gun was fired pointed down and from a height. This seems to conflict with Pistorius’s statement on Tuesday, because the athlete said that he did not have on his prosthetics and was on his stumps and feeling vulnerable because he was in a low position when he opened fire.