Pistorius, a South African paralympian known as the Bladerunner for his prosthetic legs, fought back a stream of tears to stammer out an apology to Steenkamp’s mother, June, who watched him stern-faced from the public gallery.
“Since this tragedy happened I’ve been having thoughts about your family, I wake up every morning and you’re the first people I think of, the first people I pray for,” the 27-year-old told the packed courtroom.
“I can’t imagine the pain and the sorrow and the emptiness I’ve caused you and your family. I was simply trying to protect Reeva.
“I promise that when she went to bed that night, she felt loved.”
Pistorius also said that he was scared to go to sleep and that when he did his nightmares woke him, the smell of blood still in his nostrils. “I wake up and I can smell blood and I wake up to being terrified,” he said. “I wake up just in a complete state of terror to a point that I would rather not sleep than fall asleep and wake up like that.”
Pistorius admits shooting Steenkamp, who died in a hail of bullets when she was shot through the door of the couple’s bathroom, but says he believed she was an intruder.
In earlier testimony, a forensic pathologist Mr Jannie Botha opened Pistorius’ defence telling the court that the first shot hit Steenkamp’s hip, the second hit her arm, then bullets hit her hand and head. He said she probably bending from the waist and possibly getting up from the toilet when the first shot hit her.
Pistorius was shaken during the testimony, vomiting occasionally into a bucket as he did on a previous occasion when details of Steenkamp’s death were presented to the court.
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