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Pretoria — Murder accused Oscar Pistorius will testify in his own defence, his legal team said yesterday. “I don’t think we have a choice. The question is when,” a member of Pistorius’s legal team, Brian Webber, told journalists after the murder trial was postponed to Friday by the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria.
The State closed its case in the Paralympian’s murder trial yesterday.
“If it pleases the court, My Lady, learned assessors, this is the State’s case,” prosecutor Gerrie Nel told Judge Thokozile Masipa.
This happened shortly after Barry Roux, for Pistorius, recalled Colonel Johannes Vermeulen to the stand to re-examine him.
Vermeulen had testified about the marks Pistorius made in the door of his toilet with his cricket bat.
He shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp through the locked door, apparently thinking she was an intruder, in his Pretoria home on February 14 last year. He then used a cricket bat to break down the door and get Steenkamp out.
After Nel had spoken, Roux asked for a postponement of the trial until Friday.
“We need your indulgence to consider the statements of witnesses not called by the State and see who will be available and willing to talk to us,” he told Masipa.
She granted the postponement.
Pistorius is charged with the premeditated murder of Steenkamp and with contraventions of the Firearms Control Act.
Meanwhile Steenkamp and Pistorius exchanged loving text messages days before he allegedly murdered her, the court heard yesterday.
“Truth is, I miss you,” read a message the model and law graduate sent to the “Blade Runner” on January 29, last year around 21:00.
“I’m missing you so, so much!” Pistorius replied.
The messages were read to the court by Captain Francois Moller, who downloaded data from the couple’s iPhones. He was prompted to read them to the court by Advocate Roux during cross-examination.
Roux was making the argument that the couple were in a loving relationship, as “90 percent” of the messages exchanged between them in the weeks before Steenkamp’s death indicated. On February 4, Steenkamp wrote to him: “If you want to go chill with him that’s cool angel . . . I can come to you whenever.”
Pistorius replied: “No baba, I want to chill with you.”
On February 11 she wrote: “I’m always on your side but mostly pro us and the health of our relationship.”
Another message from her ended “I have said a small prayer for both of us”.
“Kiss, kiss, kiss,” Roux added, reading from a written copy of the messages.
On Monday, Moller, being questioned by prosecutor Gerrie Nel, read to the court messages from Steenkamp to the athlete portraying a possessive Pistorius who threw temper tantrums. — Sapa
Online Reporter