Prosecutor Gerrie Nel said Pistorius was a liar and the scenario was the “only logical inference” to be made from the mountain of circumstantial evidence being presented to the court.
He alleged that Pistorius had never run to his balcony screaming for help after accidentally shooting Miss Steenkamp as he claimed and in fact the noise heard by neighbours was a violent quarrel between the pair.
“That is our case and we will get to it,” Nel said during the accused’s second day of cross-examination.
Nel and Pistorius were locked in argument over the order of events in the early hours of Valentine’s Day last year when the double-amputee Olympian shot and killed his girlfriend of four months.
Pistorius is charged with pre-meditated murder. He claims he shot the 29 year-old law graduate and model in the misguided belief she was an intruder.
In the final session of the day’s proceedings Nel repeatedly questioned Pistorius about his claim that he left Steenkamp in bed as he retrieved two fans from a balcony, locked the balcony doors, pulled the curtains and walked back past the bed without realising she had gone to the bathroom.
Pistorius said with the curtains closed the room was “pitch black”.
Using a photograph of Pistorius’s bedroom taken hours after the shooting Nel stated that it was impossible that Miss Steenkamp could have left the bed without Pistorius knowing.
He said the photograph, showing one of the fans leaning against the curtains and a duvet lying on the floor, proved that the Pistorius was lying.
“Your version is a lie because you never closed the curtains and if those curtains were open there would have been enough light for you to see Reeva,” he said.
Pistorius said that the position of the fan, duvet and curtains in the photograph was not where they had been at the time of the shooting. He said they had been moved prior to the photograph being taken.
“So you are saying the police moved two fans, moved the duvet onto the floor and opened the curtains wider than they had been,” Nel said. “Why is it that they would do this to you?”
“I don’t know why,” Pistorius answered. “I wasn’t there. I’m not a policeman.”
Nel replied, “Your version is so improbable that no-one could possibly believe it.”
It came as news emerged that Steenkamp’s parents refused to meet with Pistorius after he shot and killed their daughter,.
Pistorius made the statement after Nel accused him of “making a spectacle” with his tearful apology to Steenkamp’s mother June at the beginning of his testimony four days ago.
Nel inferred that the double amputee Olympian had used the televised apology to gain public sympathy and help his case, when it could have been done in private.
“Why would you create a spectacle in court, in the public domain, in the public eye, and not in private?” Nel asked. “You never thought about them. You never thought how they would feel, sitting in the public gallery of a court while you made that apology. Did you think how they would experience that, or did it only matter about Pistorius, Oscar Pistorius?”
Pistorius said his legal team had approached the Steenkamp’s lawyers but were told they “weren’t ready”. Nel asked why he hadn’t spoken to Steenkamp’s mother when they passed each other in the courtroom.
“I didn’t think it was appropriate to speak to her in front of everyone,” he said.
Nel looked shocked.
“Yet you do it in front of the whole world.”
The impression of Pistorius as someone who thought only of himself and refused to accept responsibility for his actions was the theme of Nel’s second day of cross-examination.
Nel went through a series of text messages between the pair, the first in which Steenkamp had complained about Pistorius’s behaviour at the engagement party of a mutual friend.
In a reply text Pistorius gave his version of events and countered each of Steenkamp’s concerns from his point of view, adding weight to Nel’s inference that this was a self-centred man who could never admit to being in the wrong.
“There were arguments,” Nel said, “and those arguments were all about you, and what’s important to you.”
In the first text Miss Steenkamp wrote, “I’m not just some bitch who is killing your vibe”.
Nel revealed that ‘Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe” was a hip-hop song that one of Pistorius’s friends had played in Pistorius’s car on the way home from the party. She later told Pistorius she was hurt that he had not turned it off.
“She was offended by the words of the song,” Pistorius admitted.
“As she should have been,” said Nel.
Steenkamp’s mother said outside court that she doesn’t know if Pistorius’ distress is an act, but insists the athlete has gone “from hero to devil”.
June Steenkamp has attended each day of Pistorius’s trial in Pretoria.
She told the Daily Mirror: “It’s very traumatic when certain things come up.”
“This is my child — and I must listen to the graphic detail.
“I look at Oscar the whole time, to see how he is coping, how he is behaving. I’m obsessed with looking at him, it’s just instinctive, I can’t explain it.” Steenkamp, 67, said the athlete’s courtroom demeanour had been very dramatic with “the vomiting and crying”.
“I don’t know whether he’s acting,” she said.
“Most of the time he’s on his cell phone or looking down at papers or writing notes.
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