The murder trial of Oscar Pistorius opened Monday with chilling testimony from the South African amputee track star’s neighbor, who described “bloodcurdling screams” coming from next door, followed by gunshots, the night of Reeva Steenkamp’s death last year.
[full]”Something terrible was happening at that house,” Michelle Burger testified.
She told the court that she heard a woman’s screams and a man screaming for help.
“Just after 3, I woke up from a woman’s terrible screams,” she said. “Then I also heard a man screaming for help. Three times he yelled for help.”
Burger said her husband called authorities. She later told her husband that she feared the woman had witnessed her husband being shot “because after he screamed, we didn’t hear him.”
Language issues caused problems after the lunch break, as defense attorney Barry Roux pressed Burger on her account during cross-examination.
She frequently had to help her Afrikaans interpreter translate her words into English, and eventually dropped speaking in her native tongue altogether.
Roux questioned Burger’s timeline of events and what she heard, asking if the “bang” sounds she heard might not have been gunshots, but rather a cricket bat bashing at the bathroom door.
She answered that she had clearly heard gunshots, testily answering Roux’s questions about timing, saying she “didn’t sit there with a stopwatch and take down the timing of each shot.”
A short time before her testimony, Pistorius pleaded not guilty to murdering Steenkamp, his girlfriend, inside his house a year ago. He also pleaded not guilty to several weapons-related charges.
It’s expected to take about three weeks for a judge to hear both sides and decide whether Pistorius mistook Steenkamp for a burglar, as he says, or killed her in cold blood.[/full]