Oscar: 'I felt her blood running down me'

: Reeva died while I was holding her. Before the ambulance arrived.

— The Herald PE (@HeraldPE)

Murder accused Oscar Pistorius felt Reeva Steenkamp's blood running down him as he tried to pick her up, he told the High Court in Pretoria on Wednesday.

He began the third day of his testimony by explaining what he did after he broke down the door of the toilet through which he had shot Steenkamp dead, apparently thinking she was an intruder, on February 14 last year.

He found her slumped over the toilet. She was shot in the hip, arm, and head.

"I checked to see if she was breathing and she wasn't. I had her head on my left shoulder and I could feel her blood was running down on me," he said.

He tried to pick her up.

"I could see that her arm was broken."

He became tearful moments into the day's testimony and paused several times between sentences.

At 3.19am he phoned Johan Stander to ask him for help as he was "struggling to pick her up".

He had already tried to phone for help on Steenkamp's phone in the toilet but did not know her password so had gone back to the room to fetch his own.

At 3.20am he called private ambulance service Netcare 911 and although he did not remember speaking to the operator, he remembered being told to take "Reeva to the hospital" and not wait.

He does not remember a call logged to security at 3.21am. He ran downstairs to open the front door to let everyone in.

Pistorius told the court that the first doctor to arrive at the scene of Reeva Steenkamp's killing appeared overwhelmed and unable to help.

"I looked up and saw Dr Stipp. I was crying for him to help me, to help Reeva, but it didn't seem like he knew what he was doing. He seemed overwhelmed by the situation," he told the court, prompted by his lawyer Barry Roux.

Johan Stipp, a resident in the Silver Woods estate, Pretoria, previously testified for the State that he found Steenkamp already dead on the ground floor of Pistorius's townhouse and Pistorius kneeling at her side.

Pistorius had his fingers in her mouth in an attempt to help her breathe and his other hand on the bullet wound on her hip. After a few moments Stipp got up and walked out.

"I was shouting for him to come back into the house and help me," Pistorius said.

Soon after paramedics arrived and asked for space to work on Steenkamp. Pistorius went into the kitchen.

"The paramedic came to me and said to me that she would like to inform me that Reeva had passed."

- SAPA