A seemingly innocuous point – when Oscar Pistorius’ slain girlfriend last ate – took center stage at the sprinter’s murder trial on Thursday.
Defense Christina Lundgren witness said there’s no way to tell exactly when Reeva Steenkamp last ate before being gunned down by Pistorius in the early morning hours of Feb. 14, 2013.
Pistorius’ lawyers need to at least muddle testimony of a prosecution witness, who said an autopsy showed food in Steenkamp’s stomach — allegedly proof that she had eaten shortly before dying.
That minute detail matters because Pistorius said he and Steenkamp ate at 7 p.m. and were in bed by 10 p.m., several hours before the 3 a.m. shooting.
Prosecutors claim Steenkamp was awake – and probably eating – long after 10 p.m. because she and Pistorius argued late into the night before he blew her away in a homicidal fit of anger.
Pistorius has always claimed that he was asleep and woke up in fear, believing there was an intruder in his Pretoria house. He opened fired into bathroom, fatally striking a cowering Steenkamp — and not an intruder.
Lundgren said the discovery of food in Steenkamp’s stomach doesn’t support any exact timeline.
“In an ideal world, after six hours of fasting after this meal, her stomach should probably have been empty, but there are so many unknowns about possible factors that could’ve delayed gastric emptying that one cannot state it as being a fact,” said Lundgren, head of the anesthesia department at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto.
“I would say it would be purely speculative.”
Pistorius lawyers also said Thursday that the Blade Runner has sold the house where he killed Steenkamp.
He accepted a buyer’s offer and the sale is being processed now, lawyers said. The former Olympian is unloading his villa, in an exclusive gated community, to pay legal fees.