The story is just a way to get sympathy. His family and friends standing by him etc.
The story is just a way to get sympathy. His family and friends standing by him etc.
Do you really think that? Like honestly?
I'm pretty sure you are not going to get charged with premeditated murder because of your mistake. Premeditated means you intentionally meant to kill the person. He could get charged with a lesser crime, maybe manslaughter or something if police believed his story.
Your point 3 is my biggest hangup. What type of person shoots blindly through a door without knowing what is on the other side? I know it has happened before but it really is inexcusable. That kind of crap makes all gun owners look bad.
Not to quibble, but the tears were probably real. They just might have been cried more for himself and the mess he knows his head is than out of remorse over what happened.Also, I wish you folks'd stop using the term "fan on stumps." This makes me think of a drunk shirtless guy with a hairy belly hopping from the remnants of one chopped-down sequoia to another as he screams himself hoarse cheering for the 49ers and two-fisting beers.
Just Saying... wrote:
Ballistics will easily show the height (or angle) of the shots through the bathroom door to show whether or not he had is "blades" on.
I doubt his "racing flats" are the prosthetics he usually wears, as this would get in the way of all sorts of shit.
no trigger lock wrote:
this is what doesn't makes sense to me
1. is it likely that a woman spending the night locks herself in the bathroom
2. when reaching under the bed for a gun to protect one's loved one, does one not either look at the bed to see that loved one is ok or alert that loved one prior to firing shots
3.OP is supposed to be proficient with firearms and presumably some sense of safety in their use: so did he know his target and what was beyond his target? in other words before he shot did he identify his target as an actual threat vs. perceived and what was beyond his target if he missed or the bullet traveled through
4. what intruder sneaks into a house through a second or third story window, and then locks the door
5. what was the noise complaint from neighbors at 1:30 am about?
6. shots fired at 3:20am neighbors call police, OP calls his dad
isn't it still premeditated murder to use deadly force even if you are mistaken about identity? I mean it is sad that OP made the mistake, if he did, but legally that doesn't change anything as far as I can tell. Does it??
having said all this, I probably am coming to this with a lot of skepticism as to OP's story, and I would sincerely be interested why you think it is a good defense
no trigger lock,
great analysis. I was still half-asleep when i read it first thing this morning.
But as for the locked bathroom, I'm sure he'll say "I didn't get close enough to realize it was locked. I'm a multimillionaire in South Africa and didn't want to end up like Sean Taylor of the Redskins."
His yelling out is good if made up as it explains some of the noise neighbors may heard. The big problem will be if there was a dispute earlier in the night.
Why is voluntary manslaughter better than premeditated murder? Voluntary manslaughter tells me that a person has no control over his emotions and shouldn't be in society. What? That argument led you to kill someone? You don't belong in society.
Not saying that premeditated murder is better. Just saying voluntary isn't really worse in my book. Hey, at least with premeditated you might have a good reason. It shows you can execute a plan. You could be a valuable member of society.
it's murda
Re the cricket bat. I'm not sure that police have said that it was bloody. How it fits in the defence according to the BBC report I heard this morning:
OP gets up in the mid-summer heat and goes to the balcony to get a fan. Walking on his stumps. Once out on the balcony, he hears a noise. Knowing that the bathroom window was left open and there were accessible ladders nearby, he presumes a burglar is in the bathroom. He returns to the bedroom, retrieves his gun from under the bed. He calls to his gf to call 911 (or the SA equivalent) and then proceeds to shoot through the bathroom door. Somewhere in all this he puts his prostheses on, but I'm not sure exactly where.
After the shots are fired, he looks around and realizes his gf isn't in the bed. In shock and horror, he tries the bathroom door, which is locked from the inside. He retrieves a cricket bat and batters the door open, where he discover's his gf's body. He tries to rescusitate her, and carries her downstairs, but she dies in his arms.
Obviously there are some problems here but this is what was reported on BBC radio this morning. I'm not sure where in all this he's supposed to have put on his prosthetic legs.
Yes, in South Africa once you have ascertained that you have stopped the assailant, you may not just continue shooting and finish them off.
Assuming you were shooting through a bathroom door, you'd have no idea the condition of the burglar...
I'm having a hard time understanding how he goes back into the bedroom to retrieve his gun from under the bed, and doesn't think to look for and/or wake up his girlfriend to let her know she needs to call the police (as he apparently yelled out).
So he went into the bedroom, grabbed the gun and only realized she wasn't there when he came back to the room after firing off 4 shots?
Has there been an explanation for this?
Yes but those reports came before the police released anything.
So who knows?
It will no doubt come out in trial that he may have had a hired "hair trigger" fear response to home intrusion due to his lack of wearing prosthetics etc.
Rodney Plonker wrote:
Even 'if' this chain events is true, there's still little or no excuse for blindly shooting at someone through a door, even if they have broken into your house. Assuming it had been someone else in there and he'd shot them dead (which is presumably what he thought he was doing at the time), he'd still be looking at extremely serious charges. He was obviously never physically or verbally threatened by the 'intruder' as they didn't exist. Absolutely no excuse for what he did.
Breaking into people's houses is obviously worthy of punishment but not being executed on the spot by some numbskull who thinks he's above the law
What is Reeva locked the bathroom door after hearing Oscar yelling? Maybe she was staying quiet as she didn't want to reveal her position to a potential intruder? When you hear someone yelling like that, you don't automatically think everything is ok, she most likely didn't think Oscar was referring to whoever was in the bathroom. I don't know really, we still need to hear more.
Read his full statement.
His story covers several of the questions this thread has raised.
crazy raisin wrote:
Can someone explain how the cricket bat thing is being used in the defense now?
Assuming there was no shot fired in the bedroom; and assuming he went to get the cricket bat in the bed room to break open the bathroom door...one could assume that if the victim was hit by four bullets through the door...that there would be plenty of blood on the bathroom floor where he could have dropped and left the cricket bat when picking her up off the floor.
Not defending him...just let's say in some wild stretch of things his story is what happened...
...really? wrote:
What is Reeva locked the bathroom door after hearing Oscar yelling? Maybe she was staying quiet as she didn't want to reveal her position to a potential intruder? When you hear someone yelling like that, you don't automatically think everything is ok, she most likely didn't think Oscar was referring to whoever was in the bathroom. I don't know really, we still need to hear more.
The things people said about how OJ might have been innocent were equally hilarious.
WHAT ABOUT HER CRUSHED SKULL???
I don't believe anyone official has made any such claim.
lolno wrote:
WHAT ABOUT HER CRUSHED SKULL???
Media goes wild when it's white on white in S. Africa, meanwhile non-celebrity whites are being slaughtered by black by the thousands and our government does nothing and our media says nothing!
How many whites have been murdered by blacks since the end of Apartheid?
An estimated 68 798 white South Africans have been murdered since 1994 mostly in racially motivated hate killings. More than 4041 white commercial farmers have been murdered in the same period. These killings are often very brutal, the attackers seldom spare anyone - even children, babies and the elderly are tortured, raped and killed. In most cases, only a few articles are stolen, sometimes nothing...
The true numbers could easily exceed these as the ANC has changed the way in which police record murders so that race isn't mentioned.
rojo wrote:
Pistorius then fired four shots through the bathroom door using his handgun. At that moment, he said that he was convinced the unseen target was an intruder. When he returned to the bedroom, he saw his mistake.
GUILTY!
He admits that he killed her.
What an idiot.