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Pretoria – The mother of Oscar Pistorius’s girlfriend insisted she did not want “revenge” yesterday, the day after the disgraced athlete was handed a five-year jail term for shooting her daughter dead.
June Steenkamp told British broadcaster ITV that she was “settled” with Pistorius’s sentence for killing Reeva, even though it could mean he is out of prison and under house arrest after 10 months.
Looking pale and holding her husband Barry’s hand, she added: “We don’t want revenge, we want a fair punishment under the circumstances on his disabilities.
“We wouldn’t have wanted him to go to jail and be abused and I feel that he will realise that he can’t go around doing that, he can’t kill someone like that.”
Pistorius, the first double amputee Paralympian to compete against able-bodied athletes at the 2012 London Olympics, was ordered to serve a maximum five years in prison for culpable homicide Tuesday after a seven-month trial.
Pistorius had testified that he shot Steenkamp four times through a locked bathroom door at his Pretoria home after he mistakenly believed she was an intruder.
Prosecutors had argued that he murdered her in a fit of rage after an argument.
June said the family accepted the decision, despite indicating that some members were not “entirely happy”.
“We’re very settled with the sentence,” she added. “We may not feel that justice has been done, but we have just got to accept what the judge decided.
“Not everyone is entirely happy . . . the facts that she [the judge] had before her maybe weren’t enough. But we have to live.”
Her husband Barry also said the family had to go along with what Judge Thokozile Masipa had decided.
“Only Oscar knows whether that sentence is acceptable to him,” he said.
“I’ve got my feelings to the whole thing. But we do accept what the judge handed down.” – AFP
Online Reporter