The long-awaited murder trial of former Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius got underway in Pretoria today with sensational testimony from a witness who claimed she heard a woman’s screams followed by four gunshots on the night Pistorius’ girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was shot dead at his Pretoria home.
The witness, Dr Michell Burger, one of Pistorius’ neighbours, was woken at 3am on February 14 last year to the sound of a woman’s “terrible screams”.
Dr Burger described the screams as “blood-curdling” and said the woman sounded “very scared” as though her life might be in danger.
But Dr Burger said she also heard a man: “Three times he yelled for help,” she said.
Pistorius’ defence counsel Barry Roux, SC, suggested it was part of the defence case that when Mr Pistorius became anxious, he could scream like a woman. He suggested to Dr Burger that in fact she may have heard his client screaming.
However, Dr Burger was adamant she heard a woman screaming, and then a male yelling for help.
Pistorius, a paralympian also known as the Blade Runner, denies the charge of murder and says that while he admits shooting his girlfriend through a toilet door, he believed that she was an intruder. The trial continues.
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