by Mandy Wiener
Roux explained that an exhibit would be submitted to show that there was a gap in the website activity from 7:10pm until 8pm. Oscar confirmed this was right.
I started dinner … we started dinner shortly after seven, M’Lady. After dinner we sat … at the dining room table for a while and we chatted about my day and we chatted about Reeva’s contract that she was in the process of signing with a new management company … I went through the contract and I made some changes for her on things that I did not think were applicable or things which could be binding for her in a negative way. And then usually after dinner we would have watched TV downstairs, but I think we both had a taxing day, so we decided to go upstairs. I helped her with the plates. Whilst we were taking the plates off the … from the table, Reeva asked me if I would like anything to drink. Anything warm to drink, I cannot remember if I asked her for coffee or tea or what it was, but I said yes and I went back upstairs and she joined me a short time afterwards. A couple of minutes later.
It must have been around, just before eight or eight o’ clock, I came into my room and I … I put the … open the balcony doors. It was a very humid evening. They had been working on my house for some time and the air-conditioning was one of the things that they needed to fix. There was some fault with it. So at the time the air-conditioning was not working.
Judge Masipa intervened to establish which room Oscar was referring to and he confirmed it was located on the first floor. He then picked up where he left off, opening the doors.
From my main room there is a small balcony. I opened the sliding doors onto the balcony. I placed … there is two fans. There is a steel tripod stand fan and there is a small plastic fan. A floor fan. I placed the tripod fan a bit further back with one of the legs on the balcony and the other two legs inside the sliding door. I placed the small fan pretty much between the legs of the larger fan, the tripod standing fan. I then closed the doors [till] they [were] more or less in line with the fans because at night, there is a light on the balcony that attracts insects and they come into my room. So I was trying to get most of the humid warm air out of the room, by having the fans there, they pulled the cool air from outside into the room. I drew the blinds and the curtains so that no bugs could come in from the outside and I had them more or less draped around the side of the standing fan.
Oscar went into great detail about the level of light in the bedroom – this was critical in explaining how he did not see Reeva getting up and going to the bathroom.
When I put curtains up in my home when I moved in, in 2008 I got all the curtains and blinds done. But in my room I got blackouts done on my curtains because of the hours that I travel, I am sometimes home for a day and a half or half a day, and the hours I sleep are not always usual, so I sometimes sleep during the day. So I got the curtains with this material, this fabric. If the curtains are drawn, you cannot see anything in the room. During the day you can barely see, if they are drawn, what you can see is along the walls, you can see the … not along the walls, I beg your pardon … along the top of the rail, you can see a bit of light coming in. But it is … it is virtually pitch black, even in the day if the curtains are drawn.
I then drew the curtains which were around the fans. I do not think … I do not think at that time I probably just left the blinds where they were, but I drew the curtain to hang over the … over the fans so that not … no insects could come in. You could see a bit of light through where the top fan was, but very little in the room. At that point the bedside lamp, bedside table lamp was … light was on. Or one of the lights in the room was on, I do not recall if it was the bedside lamp, but one of the lights in the room was on.
It was at this point that Reeva came into the room, and he took his drink from her and put it down on the bedside table. He also emphasised his security awareness, by explaining the measures he took to secure the two of them.
I walked behind Reeva where she came in the room and I closed the bedroom door and I lock the bedroom door, as I do every night and I put the cricket bat between the sunglasses cabinets and the door. If you lay the bat down in that gap, the bat is about … is about two centimetre short of being at the door. And the reason I put it there was because the lock mechanism on the door was not very strong. The doors were made, in house of a … of a wood that was very hard but very brittle and I had problems with some of the latches and locks before. So it was a concern of mine that just locking the door, with the heat the gaps between the doors increased and the lock barely caught the door. So I put the cricket bat down on the floor inside the bedroom, so that if you … if something happen that a person will not be able to come into the bedroom. That the door would be blocked by the cricket bat. That is something I did every night when I stayed at home.
Roux led Oscar to explain whether the house had an alarm system and whether it had been activated that night.
The house does have an alarm system, M’Lady. When I moved in I spent quite a bit of money putting up an alarm system. I put inside and outside beams on. The alarm system does not have any door monitors, but the outside sensors are battery operated. They are not, they do not work with wiring. So when they had painted the house in 2010, they had taken all the eyes off the outside walls and they painted the home and they were in the process of repainting now, so there were troubles with the alarm. If you take one of the outside sensors off the wall, before you activate it, it does not have a memory to remember what … what was in its scope the previous time it was activated. But I did have an alarm, I put it on every night. It activated with a remote which was on my house keys. So after I put the cricket bat at the door, I just push a button and the alarm would make a noise to indicate that it was activated.
Oscar then continued with the series of events for the evening. He came back into the bedroom and sat on the bed.
If you are facing the bed on the bottom right hand side of the bed, I took my prosthetic legs off. I took them off so that they could get some air. I had been dressed the entire day in a suit and I was … my legs needed to air, so I put them as close to the door as I could, next to the bed. I climbed onto the bed and Reeva jumped onto the bed, or got onto the bed as well and we sat chatting. The TV was on. I was texting my cousin in Port Elizabeth. Reeva was on her phone busy on … I think it was on social network or an application. She was showing me pictures every now and again on … a photo application which … of cars and of interior decorating things that she liked. At a point I was texting my cousin back and forth and I thought maybe I should just phone him and I called him.
Oscar spent some time on the phone with his cousin Graham Binge, the son of his mother’s sister. They had grown up together and Binge was travelling from Port Elizabeth to Gauteng for business.
Whilst I was on the phone, Reeva got out of bed and she started doing stretches and yoga on the floor. Like yoga exercises on the floor, at the foot of the bed. I had the phone on speaker phone and I was chatting to my cousin. Every now and again Reeva would sit up, or you know stretch and she would give me a kiss and we chatted for, I think roughly a half an hour. As I was saying good night, or the conversation was coming to an end, Reeva got up and she walked to the bathroom.
When I finished the phone call she called me to come brush my teeth. So I walked to the … I walked to the bathroom without my prosthetic legs on and I brushed my teeth. Whilst I was busy brushing my teeth she went back to the bedroom. When I came back to the room, she was lying in the middle of the bed and I walked to the closest side of the bed and if you look at the bed, on the left, earlier on in the evening when I got home I had … when I got upstairs I had taken my firearm and I placed it next to the … under the bed next to the pedestal. So that kind of … the bed has got … the bed base is a … is a furniture base and it has got four legs and the bedside table touches the floor along its entirety on its base, so I put it around the corner under the bed. So when I came back to bed I climbed onto the left hand side of the bed. It was not usual for me to sleep on the
left, because … because of my shoulder injury I could not lie on my right shoulder, so for a couple of weeks I have been sleeping on and off on the left hand side of the bed. It was not long after that I started falling asleep and getting tired. It was still extremely warm inside the room and Reeva was still sitting up in bed. She was lying with her back against the headboard and I was lying with my head on her stomach, watching something on TV. I do not remember what it was and she would show me photos every now and again and [indistinct] and she would say ‘baba, what do you think of this’ or ‘do you like this car’ and she showed me a picture of a car she really liked and we had a short conversation about it and I was getting increasingly tired. I said to her, do you want me to close the doors or would you close them when you come … when you fall asleep. Will you bring in the fans and close the curtains, and lock the door when you fall asleep and she said … you know, she said to me that she would. Then I fell asleep.
Roux interrupted the sequence of events to clarify whether Oscar had plans for Valentine’s Day, which was the next morning. This would be important to buttress the claim that the couple shared a loving relationship:
I have bought Reeva a bracelet from a designer that she liked earlier in the year. And I had not made plans for the 14th. I had not made any plans on the 14th. I had a dentist appointment on the 14th in the morning. Reeva was not going to stay at my house, so our plans were that I meet her in Johannesburg at this jewellery store that I got her the bracelet from and the bracelet had a couple of trinkets or charms on it, there were two bracelets I bought her and so, I said to her we both kind of made a thing about not making a big thing out of Valentine’s day. We were just going to have dinner. I think for us that was a nice evening. Just being alone and being at home, making dinner.
Oscar explained that Reeva had bought him a gift – the red-and-white wrapped parcel that remained on the kitchen counter in the hours after the shooting.
I made as if I was going to open it. It had red and white and pink wrapping paper and Reeva told me: You are only allowed to open it the next day. So I did not open it and on the 8th August last year, on Reeva’s birthday I opened her Valentine’s gift to me and it was a photo frame that she got made that has four photos of her and I and the card that she wrote.
Oscar seemed to have inadvertently got the date of Reeva’s birthday wrong.
The courtroom was hushed as he led them through his version. Finally, adding to the tension, Roux called for an adjournment so that Oscar could change in order to demonstrate to the court his height in relation to the toilet door. Dressed in a pair of shorts, Oscar stood next to his toilet door wearing his prosthetics. Then in a poignant, breathtaking moment, he took off his prosthetics and stood next to the door on his stumps.
It was the first time the world-renowned athlete had been on public display without his prosthetics.
Once the height comparison had been made, Oscar replaced his prosthetics but remained in his shorts as he resumed his testimony, stating that he fell asleep between 9 and 10pm.
I woke up, M’Lady in the early hours of the 14th February. It was extremely warm in my room. I sat up in bed. I noticed that the fans were still running and that the door was still open. Although the lights had been switched off, Reeva was still awake or she was obviously not sleeping, she rolled over to me and she said: Can you not sleep my baba? And I said: No, I cannot and I got out on my side of the bed.
Eyebrows were raised. Surprisingly, Oscar had not recounted this early-morning conversation in any of his previous versions.
I walked around the bed, the foot of the bed. I was holding onto the foot of the bed with my left hand. I got to the fans, where the fans were. I took the small fan, the floor fan, I placed it pretty much just inside the room and I took the bigger tripod fan and I took it by the part just underneath the fan and I placed it in the bedroom. The fans were still running. They were still running at the time and I then proceeded to close the sliding doors and lock them. I then drew the curtains.
Roux wanted to know if Oscar closed both the blinds and the curtains.
I just grabbed and closed. It was fairly dark at the time and I probably closed both of them, but I remember closing … closing the curtains. I came into the room, at this point the only bit of light that was in the room was a little LED light on the amplifier where the TV cabinet was. It was a little blue LED light and I could see a pair of jeans that were on the floor, of Reeva’s jeans. I picked the jeans up and was going to cover, just place them over the amplifier, over the light.
And, he testified, this was when everything changed.
It was at this point that I heard a window open in the bathroom. It sounded like the window sliding open and then I could hear the window hit the frame as if it had slipped to a point where it cannot slide anymore.
Roux: Is it a wooden frame window?
Accused: It is wood, all the frames in my house and doors are wooden frames, M’Lady.
Roux: That is the window referred to in the evidence of the photographer?
Accused: That is correct, M’Lady.
Roux: What did you think at the time, Mr Pistorius?
Accused: M’Lady, that is the moment that everything changed.
His voice wavering, Oscar continued:
I thought that there was a burglar gaining entry into my home. I was … I was on the side of the room where you first have to cross the passage which leads to the … which leads to the bathroom. I think initially I just froze. I did not really know what to do. I had heard this noise, I interpreted it as being somebody who was climbing into the bathroom. There is no door between the bathroom and my room. It is all one. There is a passageway but there is no door. There is a toilet door, but there is no barrier between me and the bathroom. It is one … one room. I immediately thought that somebody, if they were at the window to where the passage, entrance of the passage was, could be four, three four metres, they could be there at any moment and the first … the first thing that ran through my mind was that I needed to arm myself, that I needed to protect Reeva and I and that I needed to get my gun. I then … I was looking down the passage. I was scared that the person was going to come out, or people were going to come out at that point. I rushed as quick as I could. I could not see anything in the room, so I ran with my hand out in front of me, at times touching the floor and then when I got to my bed I made my way along the side of my bed. I grabbed my firearm from underneath the bed and it had a canvas holster on it. I immediately took it out the holster. At that point I wanted just to put myself between … get back to where the passage was, so that I could put myself between the person that had gained access to my house and Reeva. When I got just before the passage wall, I remember slowing down because I was scared that at that point, this person, during the time that I had got from … that I had left the … to where I got my firearm, could have possibly already been in the passage, in the closet passage. So I slowed down and I had my firearm extended in front of me …
Just as I … just as I left my bed, I whispered for Reeva to get down and phone the police. I … as I entered where the passa … passage is, where the closet is to the … where I entered the passage where the closet is to the bathroom, it was at that point that I was just overcome with fear and I started screaming and shouting for the burglar or the intruders to get out of my house. I shouted for Reeva to get down on the floor. I shouted for her to phone the police. I screamed at the people, the persons to get out. I was … I slowly made my way down the passage, constantly aware that this threat, these people or persons could come at me at any time. I did not have my legs on and just before I got to the wall of the … like where the tiles start in the bathroom, I stopped shouting, because I was worried that if I shout, the person would know exactly where I was. If I put my head around the corner, then I could get [a] shot. Just before I got to the … just before I got to the passage of the bathroom, I heard a door slam which could only been the toilet door. I could not see into the bathroo
m at this point, but I could hear the door slam and for me it confirmed that there was a person or people inside the toilet or inside the bathroom at that time.
Roux interrupted Oscar at this point and asked the court to display the photograph showing the entrance to the bathroom as viewed down the passage. As had happened on previous occasions, when the police officer scrolled through the album he inadvertently stopped on a photo showing Reeva’s bloodied and pale face.
June Steenkamp, like the court, was caught by surprise and sunk her forehead onto her hand as De Bruyn rubbed her back. Oscar moved backwards in his chair and put his head below the table as he started to gag. As Roux scowled at the computer operator, a court orderly fetched the sick bucket from the dock and gave it to the accused in the witness box.
After a few moments, Oscar continued, confirming photographs Roux presented to him as he went.
I got to the entrance of the bathroom, at the end of the passage, where I stopped screaming. At this point I was certain that the intruder or intruders were there …
At that point that I was entering the bathroom, I was not shouting or screaming, I was … at that point I thought that the intruder or intruders were going to come out or were around the corner or were in the bathroom at that time.
I approached this point of the entrance to the bathroom. I was walking with my left hand against the cabinet, against the closet, as far away from the entrance of the bathroom as I possibly could be. When I got the point at the bottom right hand side of the photo, I peered, I had my right, my pistol in my right hand and I peered into the bathroom. I then made my way pretty much to where the carpet and the tile meet on the left hand side, where the arrow is. The surface changed and where I can walk more comfortably on the carpet, I was not able to walk as … have as much mobility on the tile surfaces. I kept my left hand behind me and my shoulder against the wall and I had my pistol raised to my eye, to the corner of the entrance of the bathroom, over this point here.
