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PRETORIA — The bullets fired from Oscar Pistorius’ gun which killed Reeva Steenkamp are known as expanding bullets, the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria heard yesterday.
They were designed to cause maximum tissue damage, pathologist Professor Gert Saayman said.
Such a bullet caused major damage, opening up when striking human tissue.
Doctors knew to be careful when dealing with such wounds because they could cut themselves on the projectile.
Pistorius sat in the dock with his head down and hands covering his face.
He closed his ears and gagged as Saayman gave graphical evidence.
Steenkamp had a blue discoloration on her inner right buttocks that could have been caused from the bullet wound to her right hip.
“But no projectile could be found,” said Saayman.
There was also a reddish bruise on the right nipple.
The court heard that Steenkamp had a few bruises on her body that were not as a result of the shooting.
Her upper eyelids were blue-reddish and there was soft tissue swelling but no injury to the eyes.
This was not caused by direct trauma but a fracture to the skull.
As Saayman explained that it could have been blood leaking from the skull Pistorius retched loudly.
There were also bruises on the upper part of the right thigh that were not linked to the shooting and behind the left knee and the left shin.
Earlier, Saayman told the court that Steenkamp had also sustained wounds to her head, hips and hand.
Dressed in black, Pistorius’ sister, Aimee, who sat in the court gallery tried to keep her composure. She fought back tears as she listened to her brother retch.
Pistorius is on trial for Steenkamp’s murder.
He shot her through a locked bathroom door at his Pretoria home on Valentine’s Day last year. He says he mistook her for an intruder.
The State alleges that it was premeditated murder.
Attending the proceedings was Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga.
She sat in the front of the court gallery amid women clad in ANC Women’s League uniform.
They were sitting among Steenkamp’s friends.
Meanwhile, as Oscar Pistorius stands trial for murder, a large group of South African women have become like a shadow the runner seems unable to shake. The vocal group, most of them black, say they believe Pistorius’ girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, was a victim of an all-too-common crime — one that crosses all social and racial boundaries: domestic violence.
The suggestion that Olympic and Paralympic star Pistorius may have abused his girlfriend has forged an unlikely kinship. Black women have marched regularly outside the Pretoria courthouse.
The women, bolstered by the ANC Women’s League, say they will continue to march throughout his trial, which is expected to last at least three weeks and may even stretch for months.
The group of women who gathered on the crowded sidewalk during Pistorius’ bail hearing said they did not know Pistorius or Steenkamp.
He lives in an exclusive community in Pretoria. Steenkamp rose from modest beginnings in Port Elizabeth to grace the cover of fashion magazines.
Most of the protesters are older black women who took a bus or walked to the court. In a still fractured and racially divided society, their paths would rarely have crossed.
Demonstrators have previously carried signs outside his court hearings, with messages like: “No violence against women” and “No to killing of women and children”. Those messages, they said, were for him —along with another, more targeted one: “Pistorius must rot in jail”. — Sapa/IOL.
derick.khumalo