Oscar Pistorius left the witness box in tears twice today during a fierce a line of questioning from the state prosecutor who accused him of doctoring his evidence.
Gerrie Nel began the fourth day of cross-examination in the
same vein he ended last week's gruelling interrogation by claiming the runner
was changing his account of the night he killed his girlfriend.
Jumping from one piece of evidence to another, Mr Nel sought
to keep Pistorius off balance by exhaustively listing alleged inconsistencies
in the athlete's version of events.
At one point, Pistorius broke down after being asked to
repeat what he said as he moved towards the bathroom where he shot Reeva
Steenkamp after hearing a noise he thought was a burglar.
'I screamed "get the f*** out of my house",' he
wailed in a high-pitched voice, prompting the judge to end the session
temporarily to allow him to compose himself.
Proceedings were halted again a short time later when he wept
while denying that he intentionally shot his girlfriend.
When pressed to state what his defence was, Pistorius said:
'I heard the noise and I did not have time to interpret it and fired out of
fear.
Mr Nel replied: 'You know exactly what you were doing, you
fired at Reeva. You fired at her.'
Fighting back tears, Pistorius cried out 'I did not fire at
Reeva' - forcing the judge adjourn the hearing.
When he returned to the stand, Mr Nel accused Pistorius of
crying not out of grief for his girlfriend, but because he was getting his
testimony confused.
'I'm going to argue that you got emotional because you got
your defences mixed up,' Mr Nel claimed, saying that the Olympian he had
changed his defence from self-defence to one of involuntary action.
Support: The Paralympian has returned to the stand after a
gruelling week in which he was accused of deliberately shooting Reeva Steenkamp
after an argument
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