A doctor who was the first eyewitness on the scene after Oscar Pistorius fatally shot Reeva Steenkamp testified Thursday that he found her “mortally wounded” with her brains spilling from her shattered skull.
“At the bottom of the stairs . . . there was a lady lying on her back on the floor,” said neighbor Johan Stipp, a radiologist, adding that he could see “blood, hair and what looked like brain tissue intermingled with that” where her skull had been shattered by a bullet.
“I opened her right eyelid, the pupil was fixed dilated and the cornea was milky. In other words, it was already drying out, so to me, it was obvious that she was mortally wounded,” Stipp said under questioning by prosecutor Gerrie Nel in a South African courtroom.
As the doctor described the grisly scene during the fourth day of the “Blade Runner’s” murder trial, Pistorius, 27, shuddered, cried and again clasped his hands over his ears so he would not have to hear about the harrowing aftermath of what he had done.
The gripping testimony was the first detailed description of the carnage in the double-amputee Olympic sprinter’s luxury Pretoria home after he shot the beautiful blond model and TV personality on Valentine’s Day 2013.
Stipp said a distraught Pistorius appeared to be trying to revive her.
“He had his left hand on her right groin, and his right hand, the second and third fingers in her mouth. I remember the first thing he said when I got there was, ‘I shot her. I thought she was a burglar. I shot her,’ ” Stipp said.
Stipp said he tried to help, but knew it was probably useless because Steenkamp, 29, was showing no signs of life.
“She had no pulse in the neck, she had no peripheral pulse. She had no breathing movements that she made. Oscar was crying all the time. He was praying to God, ‘Please let her live,’ ” Stipp said.
“Oscar said he would dedicate his life and her life to God” if she lived, the witness said.
At one point, when Pistorius left Steenkamp, Stipp and housing- complex manager Johan Stander to go upstairs, Stipp thought Pistorius might kill himself.
“I noticed that Oscar was going upstairs and I asked Mr. Stander if he knew where the gun was because it was obvious that Oscar was emotionally very, very upset,”Stipp said.
“I didn’t know the situation in the house, so I thought maybe he was going to hurt himself.”
Pistorius admits shooting Steenkamp through a bathroom door, but claims he thought she was an intruder. Authorities insist he killed her as she cowered in the locked bathroom after a predawn argument turned violent.