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PRETORIA. — The prosecution accused Oscar Pistorius of feigning emotion to dodge tough questions about the death of his girlfriend, as his second week of testimony in the murder trial began yesterday.
Frustrated with Pistorius’s frequent crying in the witness box, prosecutor Gerrie Nel toughened his questioning and accused the Paralympic star of crocodile tears.
“Mr Pistorius, you’re not using your emotional state to escape, are you?” he said after the athlete broke down under questioning on one of several occasions yesterday.
“You’re getting frustrated because your version is improbable and you’re getting emotional,” he said.
During six days of testimony, Pistorius has often appeared harrowed when evidence has turned to the moments before and after he fired the four shots that killed Steenkamp.
Yesterday, he again burst into tears when he re-enacted his high pitched call for supposed intruders to “get the f*** out of my house!”
Nel claimed Pistorius was crying because he knew he was shouting at Steenkamp and not a supposed intruder, putting the state’s case that she was preparing to leave after an argument when she was shot.
“You know exactly, you fired at Reeva. These other versions cannot work, you fired at her, you did. Why are you getting emotional now?” Nel said accusingly.
“I did not fire at Reeva,” he said, weeping and forcing another adjournment.
He said he acted out of fear, but maintained the shooting was an accident. “If it was an intruder (behind the door), would it have been an accident?” Nel asked him.
“I think so, my lady,” Pistorius said.
“My Lady I didn’t have time to think. I heard this noise, and I thought it was somebody coming out to attack me so I fired my firearm,” he told the court.— AFP/Sapa.
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