Before the trial even began, everyone knew Oscar Pistorius’s side of the story: He was a man in fear of his life.
The athlete known as “Blade Runner” could not get way from the paranoid belief that his life was in danger, saying that he was convinced an intruder had somehow gotten into his home.
The 27-year-old found himself headed to the bathroom with his gun and preparing for the worst. Pistorius fired multiple times through the bathroom door, hitting what he thought was a dangerous home invader.
It was only after the fact that he realized there was no intruder, and the person he’d fatally shot was in fact his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
The death of 29-year-old Steenkamp by this account was not an act of cold blooded murder, but instead a tragic and entirely unintended accident.
While this may seem a plausible enough defense, the prosecution has produced an indirect challenge to this supposed series of events in the form of a testimony by Pistorius’s ex-girlfriend Samantha Taylor.
Pistorius ex: He cheated, he yelled, he always had his gun http://t.co/Gtahwc1rSg
— Jane Velez-Mitchell (@jvelezmitchell) March 7, 2014
Oscar Pistorius is physically sick during his murder trial as he hears evidence from a post- mortem examination on his girlfriend's body.
— NigeriaNewsBeat (@NigeriaNewsBeat) March 10, 2014
Taylor testified on Friday that the two of them broke up after he cheated on her with the deceased Steenkamp.
More importantly, Taylor testified that Pistorius would awaken her whenever he feared that someone was trying to break in.
She shared one incident where Pistorius had supposedly heard someone banging against the bathroom window. Taylor testified that he had woken her up to ask if she heard the noise as well. She said that he took a gun to the bathroom to check things out.
Whenever there was such a situation as far as Taylor knew, Pistorius would wake her up.
This raises a very interesting question: Why did Pistorius deviate from this apparent pattern of behavior with Steenkamp?
Pistorius claimed that he understood Steenkamp to be in bed sleeping, which is what led to him mistaking her for the intruder.
With others testifying to hearing gunshots, screams, and physical evidence to come, one may be tempted to overlook this bit of testimony. This despite it being perhaps one of the more revealing aspects of the Oscar Pistorius trial thus far.
Image via YouTube