Pistorius free 11 years after murdering lover

Ex-Paralympian who shot dead model girlfriend he ‘mistook as intruder’ is paroled to live in luxury

SOUTH AFRICAN former Paralympic star Oscar Pistorius was released on parole yesterday, nearly 11 years after murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in one of the decade’s most notorious cases of domestic violence.

Pistorius – dubbed “Blade Runner” for his carbon-fibre prosthetic legs – shot 29-year-old model Steenkamp dead through a locked bathroom door on Valentine’s Day in 2013.

He has repeatedly said he mistook his lover for an intruder when he fired four shots into the bathroom at his Pretoria home and launched multiple appeals against his conviction on that basis.

In a statement shared by the family’s lawyer yesterday, Steenkamp’s mother June said: “There can never be justice if your loved one is never coming back, and no amount of time served will bring Reeva back.”

She said that she and her husband Barry, who died “of a broken heart” last September, had “never been able to come to terms with Reeva’s death, or the way she died”.

“We, who remain behind, are the ones serving a life sentence,” said Mrs Steenkamp, adding her only desire was to be allowed to live in peace after Pistorius’ release on parole.

Pistorius, now 37, spent about eight and a half years in jail as well as seven months under home arrest before he was sentenced for murder. A parole board in November decided he could be freed after completing more than half his sentence.

South Africa’s correctional services department said that Pistorius had become a “parolee, effectively from January 5 2024” and was now at home, without specifying where that was.

The department imposed strict conditions on his release, banning the media from taking photographs.

A monitoring official will keep an eye on him until his sentence expires in December 2029, whom Pistorius will

‘There can never be justice if your loved one is never coming back … We are the ones serving a life sentence’

have to inform if he seeks job opportunities or moves to a new address.

During Pistorius’s parole hearing last November, Mrs Steenkamp submitted a victim-impact statement, in which she said she did not believe Pistorius’s claim that he believed Reeva was an intruder in his luxury home.

“I do not believe Oscar’s version that he thought the person in the toilet was a burglar. My dearest child screamed for her life loud enough for the neighbours to hear her. I do not know what gave rise to his choice to shoot through a closed door four times at somebody with hollow-point ammunition when I believe he knew it was Reeva.”

While the National Prosecuting Authority maintained during the trial that Steenkamp had screamed from behind the lavatory door, neighbours testified he was screaming, not her.

Mrs Steenkamp, 78, who had Reeva “miraculously” when she was 42, said in her statement: “South Africa lost its hero, Oscar Pistorius, and Barry and I lost our precious daughter, Reeva, at Oscar’s hands.” The two had been in a relationship for only three months.

Pistorius will reside at his uncle Arnold Pistorius’s luxurious mansion in the upmarket Waterkloof suburb, 12 miles from the Atteridgeville Prison, where he spent most of his sentence.

The former Paralympian is banned from giving interviews, drinking alcohol and may not leave his uncle’s property for work without prior permission. He will also continue with a programme of therapy and violence management until his final release in 2029.