Pistorius ‘torn apart’ after shooting

Oscar Pistorius’ murder trial resumed yesterday with a neighbour and friend giving a heart-wrenching account of discovering the "broken" athlete coming down the stairs, holding his dead girlfriend in his arms.

After a two-week break in the trial, the defence called Johan Stander, the first man to arrive at the scene after the Paralympic gold medallist shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day last year.

“Oom [Afrikaans for uncle] Johan, please, please, please come to my house, I shot Reeva,” Stander says Pistorius told him over the phone.

When he arrived at Pistorius’ upmarket Pretoria home, Stander described seeing the athlete carrying Ms Steenkamp, 29, a model and law graduate, down the stairs. “He was screaming, he was crying, he was praying,” said Stander.

“The expression on his face, an expression of sorrow, an expression of pain, he’s crying, he’s praying,” said Stander. “It was as if he was torn apart.”

Stander, who said he considered himself a friend of 27-year-old Pistorius, said the night was not something he would want to experience again.

Pistorius was “broken, desperate, pleading,” said Stander. “How he begged God to keep her alive.”

“I saw the truth that morning, I saw it and I feel it,” he said.

Pistorius’s lawyers will spend at least the next two weeks trying to firm up the athlete’s account of the killing and counter the state’s claim that he shot his girlfriend after an argument.

Last month, under days of ferocious cross-examination, Pistorius appeared to change his defence, casting doubt on his credibility.

The runner initially told the court that he shot Ms Steenkamp through a locked toilet door, thinking she was an intruder coming to attack him in the dead of night.

But buckling under pressure, the Paralympian changed his testimony to say that he fired the four shots accidentally.

State prosecutor Gerrie Nel has accused the athlete of “tailoring” his evidence, calling his account of the killing “a lie”.

Beginning his cross-examination of Stander, Nel asked him if Pistorius ever said to him if he shot the so- called intruder by mistake.

“He never said ‘I accidentally shot her’,” said Nel. “He said... thought she was an intruder.”

Pistorius faces up to 25 years in prison if he is found guilty of premeditated murder. He fired four bullets through a lavatory door, killing Ms Steenkamp who was in the cubicle inside the athlete’s house.

Prosecutors have argued that the Valentine’s Day shooting came after a row between the couple.