Oscar reunited with high school ex
Oscar’s ex-girlfriend Jenna Edkins has been providing support and solace as he prepares for sentencing
SHE adores him and would take him back in a flash. She’s always supported him. These were the words of a source close to the Pistorius family to YOU back in October 2014 – and now it seems the Blade Runner has indeed taken back the woman he’s known from a young age.
She is Jenna Edkins, the blonde beauty whose name he’d stored on his cellphone as “Babyshoes” – and the woman Oscar Pistorius had a nine-minute phone conversation with on 13 February 2013 just hours before he shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
“They’re a couple again,” another source confirms. “Jenna even moved in with Oscar a week before he was due back in court.”
Oscar (29) had been living in a cottage at his Uncle Arnold’s house in Waterkloof, Pretoria, since being released from Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre last year.
Jenna, sleek and serious in black, was in court on 13 June alongside Oscar’s brother, Carl, as the Paralympian once again faced Judge Thokozile Masipa to hear for how long he’d have to return to jail.
A court of appeal overturned the culpable homicide judgment last year, ruling Oscar had to be sentenced for murder.
The bond between Jenna and Oscar has always been strong. They were in an on-off relationship for five years and Jenna publicly declared her support for him in a tweet the day after Reeva’s death: “I’d just like to say I’ve dated Oscar on off for five years [and] not once has he ever lifted a finger to me [or] made me fear for my life.”
They stayed so close over the years that Jenna made Oscar’s ex Samantha Taylor uncomfortable, as was revealed in the 10 |
book Oscar: An Accident Waiting To Happen by Samantha’s mom, Patricia, and Melinda Ferguson.
Jenna has only had good things to say about the guy she’d drop everything to be with if he needed her. She rushed to Oscar’s side after he was injured in a boating accident on the Vaal River in 2009, sleeping next to his hospital bed for nearly a week. Now, as he awaits his fate, she’s at his side again.
JENNA and Oscar knew each other from a young age – his late mother, Sheila, was friends with her mom and aunt. Eventually a romance blossomed. They started dating when Oscar was 20 but things started to unravel after Jenna finished studying at Wits Business School in 2011. They remained close, however, and Oscar would talk to his “Babyshoes” regularly.
They sent texts and chatted on the phone often in the month before Reeva’s death and spent time together in Cape Town in December 2012 while Reeva was in Gauteng looking after Oscar’s dogs.
Now it appears Jenna is more than a friend again. Before finding out his fate he found a woman who could comfort him, the source says.
The former top athlete has come under fire after it emerged he’d given an interview to Britain’s ITV, speaking to investigative journalist Mark Williams-Thomas, who apparently befriended Oscar during his dramatic trial. Part 1 of the show is due to be screened on ITV on 24 June.
The Pistorius family “don’t talk about the documentary much”, the insider reveals, and just try to stay optimistic.
“He knows he’s going to jail and has to face the music. He contradicts himself. One minute he’ll say he doesn’t know how he’ll come out of there alive, the next he’s planning what he’ll do when he gets out with his business deals and studies.”
Whether Jenna will be waiting for him when he gets out of prison remains to be seen. Her mom, Carey, has denied Jenna is in a relationship with Oscar – but the fact she was willing to give moral support by being in court during his sentencing hearing speaks volumes, the source says.
It’s the first time she appeared in the public gallery with the family while her former sweetheart waits to find out about his future.
ALL the old faces were back in the high court in Pretoria for the sentencing hearing: Judge Masipa of course, but also Gerrie “Pitbull” Nel, the pugnacious prosecutor, and Barrie Roux, Oscar’s advocate who had the dubious honour of having a parody rap song created using his frequent phrase, “I put it to you.”
The original trial was a worldwide spectacle and eyes were once again on the court when the sentencing proceedings started.
“Centre management reports Mr Pistorius struggled to adapt in his first month in prison and was aggressive and violent towards officials,” Nel told psychologist Professor Jonathan Scholtz, who’d been called by Oscar’s camp to testify for mitigation of sentence in the first hours back in court. Nel was referring to a statement by Kgosi Mampuru’s counselling psychologist, who wrote that Pistorius’ verbal aggression was “a further indicator of his explosive temperament”.
But Scholtz said the report was “poor”, “unscientific” and “seemed to have been plucked out of the air”. Oscar’s mental state was “too severe” for him to defend himself against a life sentence. He should be hospitalised instead of imprisoned because of his “worsening health”.
He described Oscar as “despondent, lethargic and disinvested” and said prison would have a “detrimental effect” on him. The athlete is suffering from acute depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Nel said Scholtz was biased towards Oscar. He told the psychologist a search of Oscar’s cell revealed illegal medication – but Roux said the medication was for depression. Scholtz said Oscar was unable to testify. “His condition is severe.”
And so the battle continued – and all the while a stern-faced young blonde, flanked by members of the Pistorius
family, listened with rapt attention.