The prosecutor in Oscar Pistorius’ murder trial on Wednesday told the athlete to “take responsibility” for killing Reeva Steenkamp, while ordering him to look at a gory photo of the dead woman’s shattered head.
“It’s time that you look at it!” lead prosecutor Gerrie Nel shouted while cross-examining Pistorius on the 19th day of his trial on premeditated murder charges.
“I will not look at a picture where I’m tormented by what I saw and felt that night. As I picked Reeva up, my fingers touched her head. I remember. I don’t have to look at a picture, I was there,” an emotional Pistorius replied.
The police photo showed a side view of Steenkamp’s head covered with a mass of blood and human tissue, with her eyes closed.
Nel opened his aggressive cross-examination by demanding that Pistorius simply come out and say he killed his 29-year-old girlfriend.
“I made a mistake,” Pistorius said.
“You made a mistake? What was your mistake?” Nel shot back.
Pistorius said he “took Reeva’s life.”
“You killed a person, that’s what you did! You shot and killed Reeva. Won’t you take a responsibility for that?” Nel demanded. “Say it: ‘I shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp.’”
Pistorius would not, replying only, “I did” as he held his head in his hands and rocked from side to side.
Nel said Steenkamp’s head “exploded” when it was struck by one of four hollow-point bullets the double-amputee runner fired through a closed bathroom door in his home on Valentine’s Day last year.
The prosecutor showed a video of a grinning Blade Runner shooting at a watermelon, saying it was “softer than brains” and calling the powerful .50-caliber handgun a “zombie stopper.”
Speaking of the melon, Nel said: “It exploded. You know the same happened to Reeva’s head? It exploded.”
Defense lawyer Barry Roux had earlier objected to the gun video being shown, saying it was a legal “ambush” of the defense. But Judge Thokozile Masipa allowed the video to be shown.
The “Blade Runner” – who had removed his prosthetic legs in court Tuesday in an attempt to show how vulnerable he was without them – then repeated his claim that he shot his model girlfriend by accident after mistaking her for an intruder.
“The accident was that I discharged my firearm because I believed an intruder was coming to attack me. The discharge was accidental,” Pistorius said after Nel asked what the accident was.
“I never intended to shoot anyone. I got a fright from the noise inside the toilet,” he said.
The prosecution has argued he killed her in a fit of rage after an argument turned violent and she had locked herself in the bathroom in fear. He faces a possible prison term of 25 years to life if convicted of premeditated murder.
The dramatic cross-examination caused Pistorius to once again break down, and the judge called another recess to allow him to compose himself.
Nel also started to poke holes in details of Pistorius’ version of the events of the fatal night.
The Olympic sprinter conceded that his claim in a statement a year ago that he went out onto a balcony at his home before the shooting was incorrect.
Pistorius admitted he went to the edge of the balcony but not outside.
And Nel tried to dismantle the sympathetic image of Pistorius that Roux had sought to build up during three days of testimony.
The prosecutor asked Pistorius if people looked up to him as a sporting hero, if he wouldn’t hide anything and if he lived by Christian principles.
“I’m here to tell the truth, I’m here to tell the truth as much as I can remember,” Pistorius said. He also said: “I’m human. I have sins.”
Earlier Wednesday, Pistorius described what he said were his desperate attempts to save Steenkamp after realizing it was her he had shot through the bathroom door.
“I knelt down over Reeva. She was sitting with her weight on top of the toilet bowl. I checked to see if she was breathing and she wasn’t. I pulled her weight on to me and I sat there crying for some time. I had her head on my left shoulder and I could feel her blood was running down on me. I could see that her arm was broken,” he said.
“I thought I felt her breathing. She was struggling to breathe.”
Pistorius, sobbing, then said that he then tried to carry her body downstairs.
“I couldn’t pick her up. I was struggling to pick her up. I was scared that I had hurt her more.”
At that point, neighbor Johan Stander and his daughter had arrived after hearing his cries for help.
“I said ‘We need to get her to the hospital, we need to get her to the hospital!’ They said the ambulance is on its way. Then I just sat with her and waited for the ambulance to arrive,” he said.
Once police arrived, he asked if he could wash his hands to remove Steenkamp’s blood.
“I asked a policeman if I could wash my hands because the smell was making me throw up,” he testified.
Earlier, Pistorius had kicked at and swung a bat at the bullet-marked toilet door, which had been placed in the courtroom as evidence.
It was a re-enactment of when he said he tried to kick the door down with his prosthetic legs and then bashed it with a cricket bat, an attempt to show he had tried to help Steenkamp.