Prosecutors on Friday tore into Oscar Pistorius’ claim that he did not know that girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was in the bathroom when he fired shots through the door, saying his version of events was “impossible.”
Trying to pierce the heart of the Olympian’s defense at his murder trial, state lawyer Gerrie Nel asked why the model would not have replied when Pistorius shouted at her to report an intruder to police.
“At that stage, Reeva is three meters [about 10 feet] away from you,” Nel told the athlete on the third day of cross-examination. “At the time you shouted and screamed for her to phone the police. And she never said a word? It’s not possible.”
“I think she would have kept quiet,” Pistorius said. “I presume that she would think that the danger was coming toward her, so ...”
“There is no way that you’ll convince a court,” Nel said, adding: “She would have responded.”
Nel said Steenkamp was standing and facing the bathroom door when she was shot, and that she would have been hiding somewhere in the bathroom if she had been in fear of an intruder.
“She was standing right in front of the door talking to you when she was shot. That’s the only reasonable explanation for her standing upright,” Nel said. “She wasn’t scared of anything, except you.”
Nel also ridiculed Pistorius’ claim that he thought the noise he heard must have been an intruder opening the bathroom window. “You reasonably thought that an intruder came in through your window and walked into your toilet,” Nel said. “Why would they do that?"
As Pistorius became audibly distressed on the witness stand, Nel said: “I’ve never heard you say anything about how she must have reacted when she was in the toilet.”
The athlete replied: “Many times I am haunted about what she was thinking in the last moments that she lived, many times.”
