Witness: Pistorius prayed over body of shot girlfriend
PRETORIA, South Africa — Oscar Pistorius shook slightly, his hands covering his ears as a neighbor described in court Thursday how the famous athlete knelt next to his dead or dying girlfriend, praying as he tried to help Reeva Steenkamp breathe.
The testimony in high court in Pistorius’ murder trial was riveting and was the first detailed public description of the immediate aftermath of the shooting of Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model, by the double-amputee Paralympic champion in the pre-dawn hours of Feb. 14 — Valentine’s Day — last year.
“It was obvious that she was mortally wounded,” said Johan Stipp, a radiologist, as he described what he saw at Pistorius’ villa. Stipp said he was one of the first there.
“At the bottom of the stairs ... there was a lady lying on her back on the floor,” Stipp testified.
Sitting on a courtroom bench on Thursday, Pistorius bent forward and put his hand over his face, then moved them to cover both ears
“I went near her and as I bent down, I also noticed a man on the left kneeling by her side,” Stipp said under questioning by prosecutor Gerrie Nel. “He had his left hand on her right groin, and his right hand, the second and third fingers in her mouth. I remember the first thing he said when I got there was ‘I shot her. I thought she was a burglar. I shot her.”’
Stipp, who said he didn’t know that man was Pistorius until later, said he tried to help, but that he knew it was probably no good because Steenkamp showed no signs of life. Stipp said he noticed a wound in her right thigh, in her upper arm and in the right side of the head, and there was brain tissue around the skull.
Pistorius is charged with shooting Steenkamp three times out of four shots through a toilet door in his home. Prosecutors said the athlete intentionally killed Steenkamp after an argument but Pistorius says it was a mistake.
“She had no pulse in the neck, she had no peripheral pulse. She had no breathing movements that she made,” Stipp said. “Oscar was crying all the time,” he said. “He was praying to God, ‘Please let her live.”’
Pistorius, who ran at the 2012 Olympics on his prosthetic legs and who was known as the Blade Runner, is charged with murder with premeditation.
