Andrea Peyser

Andrea Peyser

US News

Oscar Pistorius’ pathetic display at his trial is sickening

Give this retching, crying, sniveling, vomiting degenerate an Oscar! I don’t know how much more I can take of Oscar Pistorius’ rubbish.

A prosecutor on Wednesday told the athlete known as the “Blade Runner’’ for the carbon-fiber blades that replace his lower legs — which he’s not afraid to use as props to score pity — to “take responsibility’’ for slaughtering his beautiful girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine’s Day 2013.

He told Pistorius, 27, to look at a picture of the blood- and human-tissue-covered head of the model and TV personality who died, like a caged animal, at age 29 inside Pistorius’ bathroom. He refused to look.

“It’s time that you look at it!’’ yelled lead prosecutor Gerrie Nel.

“I will not look at a picture where I’m tormented by what I saw and felt that night,’’ Pistorius cried. “As I picked Reeva up, my fingers touched her head,’’ he said in a sobbing, three-hanky performance capable of drawing the envy of many a Hollywood star. “I remember. I don’t have to look at a picture, I was there.”

It was Pistorius’ third day of testimony in his premeditated-murder trial in a Pretoria, South Africa, courtroom and his first day of cross-examination. On Monday, he vomited into a plastic bucket conveniently located on the floor by his side as a forensic psychologist detailed the bullet wounds that killed Steenkamp. The sight of Pistorius’ insides are old news to court observers, who’ve been treated to his upchucking fits during court sessions past.

Born without fibulas, Pistorius, whose legs were amputated below the knee when he was 11 months old, is as shameless as he is gross. On Tuesday, Pistorius played the sympathy card by removing his prosthetic legs, to show just how vulnerable he is without them. Crying crocodile tears, he testified he was legless and thought Steenkamp was in bed on the night he shot her four times, believing she was an intruder hiding inside “the toilet,’’ waiting to pounce inside his Pretoria home.

Prosecutors maintain Steenkamp cowered in the bathroom after a vicious fight, then Pistorius killed her in a fit of rage. If convicted of premeditated murder, he could get 25 years to life in prison.

That a six-time gold-medal Paralympian who competed in the 2012 Olympics in London — the first double-amputee ever to run alongside able-bodied athletes — could try so hard to be seen as soft and powerless is an insult to strong and capable disabled people.

On Wednesday, Pistorius testified, incredibly, “I made a mistake’’ when he shot his girlfriend. Strapping on your blades backward is a mistake. Taking a young woman’s life is an obscenity.

“You made a mistake?’’ shot back prosecutor Nel. “What was your mistake?” Pistorius said his mistake was that 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.’ ”

But Pistorius would not repeat the words. He replied only, “I did” as he held his head in his hands and rocked from side to side.

The prosecutor showed a video of a grinning Pistorius shooting at a watermelon, saying it was “softer than brains’’ and calling a powerful .50-caliber handgun a “zombie stopper.’’

“You know the same happened to Reeva’s head,’’ said the prosecutor. “It exploded.”

Oscar Pistorius makes me sick to my stomach.