Pistorius ‘prayed for girlfriend to live’

SOUTH AFRICA

OSCAR PISTORIUS wept and prayed over the body of Reeva Steenkamp after shooting her, begging God to ‘‘please let her live, she must not die’’, a court was told yesterday.

Johan Stipp, a doctor living nearby who went to the scene after hearing shots and screams, said he found Pistorius crouched over the model trying to help her.

‘‘I went nearer and as I bent down I noticed a man kneeling on her left side. He had his left hand on her right groin and his right hand, second and third fingers in her mouth,’’ he said.

‘‘I remember the first thing he said when I got there was: ‘I shot her, I thought she was a burglar and I shot her’.’’

Stipp, a radiologist, said that as he examined the 29-year-old’s body, there were no signs of life.

Her pupils were fixed and dilated, she had no pulse and he could see brain tissue mixed with blood and hair from the gunshot wound to her head. She also had wounds to her right thigh and right upper arm, he said.

‘‘She was clenching down on Oscar’s fingers as he was trying to open her airway,’’ he said. ‘‘To me it was obvious that she was mortally wounded.’’

‘‘Oscar was crying all the time, he prayed to God: ‘Please let her live, she must not die’. At one stage he was praying that he would dedicate his life and her life to God if she would just only live and not die that night,’’ he said.

In court, Pistorius rocked forwards as if preparing to be sick. He kept his head down, his shaking hands locked behind his neck.

Asked by Pistorius’ lawyer Barry Roux if he believed the athlete was genuine in his grief, Stipp replied: ‘‘He looked sincere to me. He was crying and had tears on his face.’’

Stipp was the seventh witness in the televised trial of the Paralympic athlete. Pistorius denies the premeditated murder of his girlfriend by shooting her through a locked toilet door at his home in Pretoria in February last year. He claims he thought Steen- kamp was an intruder. The prosecution say he shot her deliberately after a row.

Stipp said he was woken by ‘‘three loud bangs’’ which he believed were gunshots. ‘‘I got out of bed and went to the balcony. As I looked out trying to ascertain where it was coming from, I heard screaming,’’ he said. ‘‘It sounded to me like it was a female. She screamed three or four times. I went back into the room and phoned security.’’

The court was shown aerial photographs which showed that Stipp was the closest person to have heard the incident to give evidence so far, living about 60 metres from Pistorius’ house across open land.

Stipp said that as he went out to the balcony after calling security, he heard three more bangs and a man’s voice shouting for help. He decided to go over to help, thinking children might be involved in a ‘‘family tragedy’’.

‘‘I went towards the front door,’’ he said. ‘‘There was a lady standing there. I said I was a doctor and asked if I could be of assistance. She showed me through the door and towards the stairs where there was a lady lying on her back.’’

Two previous witnesses have both said that screams preceded the first gunshots. The defence has suggested that previous witnesses have confused gunshots with the sound of Pistorius knocking down the bathroom door with a cricket bat after the shooting, and that the screams were not those of Steenkamp before shots were fired, but those of Pistorius after realising what he had done.

By establishing this, the defence hopes to discredit a sequence of events implied by other witnesses that would suggest Pistorius would have known who he was killing. However, Stipp also told the court that he saw lights on in Pistorius’ bathroom from his own balcony. Pistorius has said that he was ‘‘too scared’’ to switch on the lights until after he fired the shots, realised what had happened and screamed for help.

The case is continuing.