Pistorius faces aggressive questioning from prosecutor

After two tumultuous days in which he gave his account of the night he shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp, the Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius on Wednesday was confronted by the man whose mission is to dismantle his story, piece by piece – the state prosecutor, Gerrie Nel.

Combative, dogged and pugnacious, Mr Nel is known here as “the pit bull” and he wasted no time in trying to rattle Pistorius, who had already appeared considerably shaken by the proceedings in his murder trial. “You killed Reeva Steenkamp, didn’t you?” Mr Nel snapped at Pistorius. “Say it. Say ‘yes, I shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp’.”

In a shocking move that brought gasps from the courtroom, Mr Nel suddenly displayed a photograph of Steenkamp’s head after the shooting, with blood and brains spilling from it and all but ordered Pistorius to look at it.

“Take responsibility for what you’ve done!” he snapped. Pistorius refused, saying he was “tormented” by the memories of what Steenkamp’s head felt like after she died, when he cradled her in his arms and sobbed over her lifeless body.

Pistorius wept, as he has on numerous occasions since his trial began, and the court took a break while he composed himself. “I’m fighting for my life,” he said at one point.

Nel repeatedly asked Pistorius about the location of two ventilation fans in his bedroom on the night of the killing, seeking to undermine the defence’s contention that the crime scene was contaminated by clumsy police work and other factors.

The detail was important, Mr Nel told the athlete, because “it will show that you are lying”. Pistorius said his memory was not good “but I’m not trying to lie. I can’t change the truth.”

Pistorius (27) maintains that the killing was a tragic mistake and that he fired four rounds through a locked bathroom door on the morning of February 14th, 2013, because he was convinced an intruder had broken into his house.

The prosecution says he deliberately killed Steenkamp (29) in a fit of rage as the two argued. Earlier, he had told the court he did not intend to kill her “or anybody else”.

Describing the scene when he broke down the bathroom door with a cricket bat after having tried to kick it open, he said: “I could see she was breathing, struggling to breathe.”

Pausing between sentences and coaxed gently by his lawyer, Pistorius struggled to hold back sobs as he described carrying Steenkamp’s bleeding body down the stairs of his house. He tried to help Steenkamp breathe by putting his fingers in her mouth, he said, and tried fruitlessly to staunch the bleeding from her hip.

“I just sat there with her and waited for the ambulance to arrive,” he said, but when an ambulance got there, a paramedic informed him “that Reeva has passed”, he said. “Reeva had already died whilst I was holding her.”

Police officers at the scene took photographs of him for several hours and finally told him he was under arrest and took him into custody.

Then the cross-examination began. The court adjourned briefly after Mr Nel asked Pistorius if he had heard the term “zombie-stopper,” apparently referring to a type of gun or ammunition, and the defence and the prosecution tussled over whether Mr Nel could show a video in which Pistorius used the expression while at a shooting range.

After their argument, the video was broadcast to the court. It showed Pistorius firing several weapons, including a handgun and a shotgun, and using a watermelon as a target. When the melon was hit and exploded, a voice off camera said the gun had functioned as a “zombie-stopper” and that the watermelon was “softer than brains.”

“I was shooting at a watermelon with a handgun,” Pistorius testified. “That was my voice saying those words,” he said, adding that he was “very upset” to hear himself.

In any case, he said, he had been referring to zombie brains, not human ones. – ( New York Times service)