Oscar Pistorius covered his ears and cried like a baby during the second day of his murder trial Tuesday when his lawyer said his girlfriend had too much brain damage to scream for help after the famed athlete shot her in the head.
“There was serious, serious brain damage. She could not have screamed,” defense lawyer Barry Roux said, trying to undermine prosecution witness Michelle Burger’s testimony that a woman’s desperate screams faded only after Burger had heard several gunshots.
The “Blade Runner” paralympian, wearing a dark suit and a blue tie, immediately broke down for the first time since the trial began on Monday, covering his ears with his hands as tears streamed down his cheeks.
Pistorius, 27, then took a tissue offered by a woman sitting with his family and wiped the tears from his eyes, according to The Times of South Africa.
Roux spent most of the morning trying to counter devastating testimony from Burger, who testified Monday she had heard a woman’s “blood-curdling screams” followed by a man’s cries for help and then gunshots.
The lawyer again asserted that it was Pistorius and not victim Reeva Steenkamp, 29, she had heard screaming, a claim Burger denied under a tough cross-examination.
Roux claimed Pistorius’ voice rose to a high pitch — like a woman’s — when he was under emotional stress.
The lawyer also argued that Burger’s home was about 200 yards from Pistorius’ place — too far to accurately hear a woman screaming from a locked bathroom.
But Burger countered that she was still haunted by the screams.
“When I’m in the shower, I relive her shouts,” Burger said, breaking into tears herself at one point.
Roux also asked why Pistorius would shout for help before the shots were fired.
“The only thing I can wonder is that it was a mockery, but I do not know. Mr Pistorius is the person who must answer that,” Burger replied, insisting her memory was accurate.
Burger’s husband, Charl Johnson, took the stand later Tuesday and in chilling detail backed his wife’s account that they heard a terrified woman’s desperate pleas for help the night Pistorius fired four shots into his bathroom, hitting Steenkamp three times.
“I stood on the balcony and heard a woman shouting for help, then a man shouting ‘Help, help, help,’” Johnson said under questioning from prosecutor Gerrie Nel.
“I then went back to the balcony and I heard the woman’s scream. The intensity and fear escalated and that’s when the first shots were fired,” said Johnson.
He said the last scream came after the last gunshot was fired.
Yet another witness testified Tuesday that she also heard loud arguing coming from the direction of Pistorius’ posh Pretoria pad early on the morning of Valentine’s Day 2013.
“It lasted for about an hour,” said neighbor Estelle van der Merwe, testifying in Afrikaans through a translator.
Also on Tuesday, Steenkamp’s mother, June, said she doesn’t care what happens to the once-beloved Pistorius because it won’t bring her daughter back.
“It doesn’t matter to me what happens to Oscar because my daughter is never coming back,” a somber Steenkamp said on the “Today” show about Reeva.
“We just want the truth. We want the truth of what happened. And only she and Oscar were there. And she’s not here anymore,” she said.
Steenkamp attended the first day of Pistorius’ trial on murder charges Monday in a South African courtroom, hoping to look her daughter’s killer in the eye.
But Pistorius — nicknamed “Blade Runner” because of his prosthetic carbon-fiber legs — refused to meet her tearful gaze.
“I wanted to see Oscar face-to-face. I wanted to be there for my daughter,” she said, adding that her husband had recently suffered “a small stroke” and couldn’t be in court.
“He just walked into the courtroom and he looked straight ahead, and then he sat down and never looked my way at all. I didn’t have an opportunity to do that.”
And despite her daughter’s bloody death at Pistorius’ hands, she said she has no vengeance in her heart and is willing to forgive the killer.
“It’s actually important to forgive him for me because I don’t want to live with bitterness in my life. I don’t want that. And I think that one has to forgive,” said Steenkamp, who did not attend Tuesday’s proceedings.
“I’ve lost the thing most precious in my life, myself and my husband. Our daughter, our beautiful daughter. We were close, we were really close. But still, I can forgive. I can forgive.”
Pistorius has admitted shooting Steenkamp as she cowered in his bathroom, but claims he thought she was an intruder at the heavily guarded, gated compound where he lived.
June Steenkamp also told ITV News that reports of her daughter’s gut-wrenching screams devastated her.
“That’s my child that I gave birth to and it’s hard for me that she’s dead, that she’s gone. That was the time I broke down. The screaming, you know. That was my child there that was screaming, that was injured and dying.”
Tuesday’s proceedings were briefly halted when Nel said he had learned that a South African TV channel had broadcast Burger’s photo — violating a judge’s order that such photos can only be shown if the witness consents.
Wearing a black suit and pink blouse, Burger was visibly upset after learning that her photo had been broadcast by eNCA TV.
“I am warning the media, if you do not behave, you are not going to be treated with soft gloves by this court,” Judge Thokozile Masipa said.
Pistorius faces a life sentence with a minimum of 25 years in prison before parole if convicted of premeditated murder.