Pistorius takes the stand
Tearful : "I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to Mr & Mrs Steenkamp, to Reeva's family"— The Herald PE (@HeraldPE)
Murder-accused paralympian Oscar Pistorius took the stand at noon in the High Court in Pretoria on Monday.Pistorius apologised to the family and friends of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, whom he shot dead on Valentine's Day last year. Taking the stand in the High Court in Pretoria, a tearful Pistorius said: "I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to Mr and Mrs Steenkamp, to Reeva's family." "I don't like doing this to you, but I can hardly hear you," interjected Judge Thokozile Masipa.
He continued: "I wake up every morning and you [her family] are the first people I think of, the first people I pray for... "I was simply trying to protect Reeva."
He said he could promise her family she felt loved when she went to bed that night.
Oscar tells of his medication
: "I smell blood and I wake up to be terrified. I hear a noise, I wake up in just... in a complete state of terror..." — The Herald PE (@HeraldPE)
Pistorius also told the court that he struggled to get to sleep. He said he was on medication for depression after he shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his home in Pretoria on Valentine's Day last year."I"m scared to sleep," said Pistorius, his voice shaking, holding a white tissue. "For several reasons. I have terrible nightmares about things that happened that night. "I smell blood and I wake up to be terrified. I hear a noise, I wake up in just... in a complete state of terror..."
He said he was on the anti-depressant Cipralex and sleeping medication on the advice of family and friends after he lost a significant amount of weight. "For many weeks I didn't sleep."
Oscar tells how supportive his mom was and of her death
describes how he became a paralympian. Then more details on his mother and her death.— The Herald PE (@HeraldPE)
Oscar Pistorius's mother was very supportive, the paralympian testified."She didn't ever want me to see my disability as something that should hold me back," said the double amputee who went on to compete in the Olympic Games.
She allowed him to pursue sports, and if he fell she allowed him to get up for himself.
He went to primary school on the West Rand. In primary school, the prosthetic legs he had were very heavy and did not allow him to be as mobile.
"It was difficult," he said.
He encountered some teasing and bullying for the first time, after growing up to think he was like everyone else.
"I had grown up not thinking I was any different," he said.
He was bullied and pushed around a few times and his parents told him to stand up for himself.
"My family always believed in standing up for yourself and standing up for what you believe in. We were taught that you have got to cope."
He related a story of how mother stood up for him when he stood up to a bully who had pulled his buttons off his shirt.
His mother also had her own pistol, which she kept under her pillow, for safety.
Pistorius got to his mother's bedside 10 minutes before she died when he was 15 years old, the court heard.
He said he and his brother Carl and sister Aimee did not know she was sick and had not been home for a while when they were told she was ill.
"I think we were there about 10 minutes before she passed," he said, sitting down after initially standing for his testimony.
"Everything we learnt from life I learn from her."
Pistorius has been charged with the murder of Steenkamp and contraventions of the Firearms Control Act.
He said he thought there was an intruder in his house when he shot and killed Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentine's Day through the door of a toilet in his Pretoria house last year. She had been spending the night.
He allegedly fired a shot from a Glock pistol under a table at a Johannesburg restaurant in January 2013.
On September 30, 2012 he allegedly shot through the open sunroof of a car with his 9mm pistol while driving with friends in Modderfontein.
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
- SAPA
